k turning to dark by the time they reached the remote green
by the poplars and accepted the new and aimless game of shooting at
the old mark.

The last light seemed to fade from the lawn, and the poplars against
the sunset were like great plumes upon a purple hearse, when the
futile procession finally curved round, and came out in front of the
target. Sir Howard again slapped his host on the shoulder, shoving
him playfully forward to take the first shot. The shoulder and arm
he touched seemed unnaturally stiff and angular. Mr. Jenkins was
holding his gun in an attitude more awkward than any that his
satiric friends had seen or expected.

At the same instant a horrible scream seemed to come from nowhere.
It was so unnatural and so unsuited to the scene that it might have
been made by some inhuman thing flying on wings above them or
eavesdropping in the dark woods beyond. But Fisher knew that it had
started and stopped on the pale lips of Jefferson Jenkins, of
Montreal, and no one at that moment catching sight of Jefferson
Jenkins's face would have complained that it was commonplace. The
next moment a torrent of guttural but good-humored oaths came from
Major Burke as he and the two other men saw what was in front of
them. The target stood up in the dim grass like a dark goblin
grinning at them, and it was literally grinning. It had two eyes
like stars, and in similar livid points of light were picked out the
two upturned and open nostrils and the two ends of the wide and
tight mouth. A few white dots above each eye indicated the hoary
eyebrows; and one of them ran upward almost erect. It was a
brilliant caricature done in bright dotted lines and March knew of
whom. It shone in the shadowy grass, smeared with sea fire as if one
of the submarine monsters had crawled into the twilight garden; but
it had the head of a dead man.

"It's only luminous paint," said Burke. "Old Fisher's been having a
joke with that phosphorescent stuff of his."

"Seems to be meant for old Puggy"' observed Sir Howard. "Hits him
off very well."

With that they all laughed, except Jenkins. When they had all done,
he made a noise like the first effort of an animal to laugh, and
Horne Fisher suddenly strode across to him and said:

"Mr. Jenkins, I must speak to you at once in private."

It was by the little watercourse in the moors, on the slope under
the hanging rock, that March met his new friend Fisher, by
appointment, shortly after the