Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/126

116 Again she caught his arm.

"Don't leave me alone now that they can come in."

She pointed at her husband.

"Look at him. He saw it in the fog that came through the window. It is all fog out there. Don't leave me alone."

He thrust the revolver impatiently in her hand.

"Then take this. Not much use outside on such a night."

He jumped to the lawn and started swiftly across. Since the intruder had fled this way he might hear him in the woods, might grapple with him. He regretted the loss of his revolver, although he realized it would be useless to-night except at close quarters, and for that he possessed a cleverly-devised reserve, which he had arranged on first joining the force—a folding knife, hidden in his belt, sharp, well-tested, deadly.

At the edge of the woods he paused, straining his ears, trying to get his bearings, for he was on unfamiliar ground and the fog was very dense here. It lowered a white, translucent shroud over the nocturnal landscape. Beneath its folds he could make out only one or two tree trunks and a few drooping branches. These, as he stared, gave him the illusion of moving surreptitiously.

The moon, he knew, was at the full, but its golden rotundity was heavily veiled to-night, so that it had the forlorn, the sorrowful appearance of a lamp,