"Stand! Is there any one there ?" And Alec in his heart called him a fool for his pains, and yet he himself had not been less startled.

Nothing more was heard.

It was only that time--time, that mysterious medium through which circumstance comes to us from the source of being; that river which, unseen, unfelt, unheard, flows onward everywhere--had just then brought the moment for some dead branch to fall.
END OF BOOK II..