All the bushes and the trees, all the poppies and the grass are just as they ought to be.
"How did whoever or whatever it was that made this, get here and get away without leaving any trace but this?
Damned if I don't think Chiu-Ming's explanation puts less strain upon the credulity than any I could offer." I peered about.

It was so.

Except for the mark, there was no slightest sign of the unusual, the abnormal.
But the mark was enough! "I'm for pushing up a notch or two and getting into the gorge before dark," he was voicing my own thought.

"I'm willing to face anything human--but I'm not keen to be pressed into a rock like a flower in a maiden's book of poems." Just at twilight we drew out of the valley into the pass.

We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to make camp.