The minutes passed.

He went steadily forward.

Then abruptly he paused, his head in the air, eye and ear alert.

To that strange sixth sense of his, responsive as the leaves of the sensitive plant, had suddenly come the impression of a human being near at hand.

He had neither seen nor heard, but for all that he stopped an instant in his tracks; then, the sensation confirmed, went on again with slow steps, advancing warily.
At last, his swiftly roving eyes lighted upon an object, just darker than the grey-brown of the night-ridden land.