ow or other did manage
to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
undecipherable manner--appalling.

It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that
painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.

But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
terror as he saw it.

Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
continuance. There was--nothing.

The trees were very thick just there, big trees all