For a while, straining my eyes where I lay flat among the taller fringing ferns, I could just make out a blot in the greyness where he sat upright, like a watching catamount under the stars.
Then, across the dimness, another blot moved to join him; and I felt my hair stir as chilling certainty shocked from me my lingering hope that I had been mistaken.
Faintly--oh, scarce audible at all--the murmur of two voices came to me there where I lay under the misty lustre of the stars.

Nearer, nearer I crept, nearer, nearer, until I lay flat as a shadow there, stark on the shelf of rock.

And, as though they had heard me, and as if to spite me, their voices sank to whispers.

Yet, I knew of a certainty that I had neither been observed nor heard.
Hushed voices, whispers, undertones as soft as summer night winds--that was all I heard, all I could make of it; and sniffed treason as I lay there, making no question of the foulness of this midnight tryst.
It was an hour, I think, they sat there, two ghostly figures formless against the woods; then one rose, and presently I saw it was the Sagamore.
Noiselessly he retraced his steps across the silvery esplanade of rock; and if my vague, flat outline were even visible to him I passed for a shadow or a cleft beneath his notice--perhaps for a fallen branch or heap of fern and withered leaf--I know not.

But I let him go, unstirring, my eyes riveted upon the other shape, seated there like some grey wraith upon a giant's tombstone, under the high stars.
Beyond the ferns I saw the shadow of the Sagamore against the stream pass toward our camp.