footfalls slowly drawing nearer. A cold sweat chilled him; for a moment he was on the point of leaping to his feet. Yet, having begun his experiment, he was game enough to see it through, and once again he said calmly, 'Come on, Byng."
For perhaps half a minute more he lay still, fearing rather than hoping that his experiment would succeed. Then, slowly and still lying on his back, he turned his head.
The glade was empty.
The boy walked home through copper-splashed autumn woods and open savannahs of waving broom grass which with all their glory of gold and purple blooms could not keep his thoughts from returning again and again to the strange thing that had happened that morning. It was the strangest thing in all his experience, a thing the beginnings of which went back two years or more to those last days of his on the plantation before, in an evil moment, he had been persuaded to accept the offer of a former schoolmate in the North, whose father, a wealthy manufacturer, had gladly agreed to make an opening in his office for his son's closest friend. The plan had failed dismally. After many months of unhappiness in the rush and tumult of a great city, the boy, a planter born and bred, had given up a
