"I wonder how long it will be before he comes back again." Deringham did not answer her, but there was a curious look in his face, and he seemed to shiver.

It was, however, very cold, and the rain drove into the verandah.
It was ten days later and the little party, clearing a path for the horses through a chaos of fallen trunks and thickets, had made with difficulty some six or eight miles a day, when Alton was awakened one night by the trampling of the beasts.

He sat up in his blankets and listened intently, but could only hear the hoarse roar of a river and the little cold breeze moaning in the pines.

A man new to that region would have lain down again, but Alton had taught himself to understand a little of the nature of the beasts that worked for him, and when he heard another movement crept to the tent door.
Looking out he could see the pines lifting their spires of blackness against the night where they followed the ridge of a hill.

That was on the one hand, but on the other they rolled, vague and blurred, down into a vast hollow from which the mist was drifting.