As I went, thus wrapped in meditation, I saw something white lying upon the grass, and pushed it aside with the point of the Spaniard's sword, not heeding it.

Still, its shape and fashioning remained in my mind, and when I had left it some three hundred paces behind me, and was drawing near to the house, the sight of it came back to me as it lay soft and white upon the grass, and I knew that it was familiar to my eyes.

From the thing, whatever it might be, my mind passed to the Spaniard's sword with which I had tossed it aside, and from the sword to the man himself.

What had been his business in this parish ?--an ill one surely--and why had he looked as though he feared me and fallen upon me when he learned my name?
I stood still, looking downward, and my eyes fell upon footprints stamped in the wet sand of the path.

One of them was my mother's.