Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery Read Free

took
the shape of stooping people, moving stealthily past me, and how the
mist more and more resembled huge protean figures escorting me across
the desolate hills, silently, with immense footsteps. For the inanimate
world now touched my awakened poetic sense in a manner hitherto
unguided, and became fraught with the pregnant messages of a dimly
concealed life. I readily understood, for the first time, how easily a
superstitious peasantry might people their world, and how even an
educated mind might favour an atmosphere of legend. I stumbled along,
looking anxiously for the lights of the cottage.
    Suddenly, as a shape of writhing mist whirled past, I received so
direct a stroke of wind that it was palpably a blow in the face.
Something swept by with a shrill cry into the darkness. It was
impossible to prevent jumping to one side and raising an arm by way of
protection, and I was only just quick enough to catch a glimpse of the
sea-gull as it raced past, with suddenly altered flight, beating its
powerful wings over my head. Its white body looked enormous as the mist
swallowed it. At the same moment a gust tore my hat from my head and
flung the flap of my coat across my eyes. But I was well-trained by
this time, and made a quick dash after the retreating black object,
only to find on overtaking it that I held a prickly branch of gorse.
The wind combed my hair viciously. Then, out of a corner of my eye, I
saw my hat still rolling, and grabbed swiftly at it; but just as I
closed on it, the real hat passed in front of me, turning over in the
wind like a ball, and I instantly released my first capture to chase
it. Before it was within reach, another one shot between my feet so
that I stepped on it. The grass seemed covered with moving hats, yet
each one, when I seized it, turned into a piece of wood, or a tiny
gorse-bush, or a black rabbit hole, till my hands were scored with
prickles and running blood. In the darkness, I reflected, all objects
looked alike, as though by general conspiracy. I straightened up and
took a long breath, mopping the blood with my handkerchief. Then
something tapped at my feet, and on looking down, there was the hat
within easy reach, and I stooped down and put it on my head again. Of
course, there were a dozen ways of explaining my confusion and
stupidity, and I walked along wondering which to select. My eyesight,
for one thing—and under such conditions why seek further? It was
nothing, after all, and the dizziness was a momentary effect caused by
the effort and stooping.
    But for all that, I shouted aloud, on the chance that a wandering
shepherd might hear me; and of course no answer came, for it was like
calling in a padded room, and the mist suffocated my voice and killed
its resonance.
    It was really very discouraging: I was cold and wet and hungry; my legs
and clothes torn by the gorse, my hands scratched and bleeding; the
wind brought water to my eyes by its constant buffeting, and my skin
was numb from contact with the chill mist. Fortunately I had matches,
and after some difficulty, by crouching under a wall, I caught a swift
glimpse of my watch, and saw that it was but little after eight
o'clock. Supper I knew was at nine, and I was surely over half-way by
this time. But here again was another instance of the way everything
seemed in a conspiracy against me to appear otherwise than ordinary,
for in the gleam of the match my watch-glass showed as the face of a
little old gray man, uncommonly like the folk-lorist himself, peering
up at me with an expression of whimsical laughter. My own reflection it
could not possibly have been, for I am clean-shaven, and this face
looked up at me through a running tangle of gray hair. Yet a second and
third match revealed only the white surface with the thin black hands
moving across it.
II
    And it was at this point, I well remember, that I reached what was for
me the true heart of the adventure, the little fragment of real
experience I learned from it and took