It happened exactly as described. This was exactly the

language used. I see it written before me in black and white. I see,

too, the faces of all concerned with the sudden ugly signature of alarm

where before had been peace. The terror had stretched out, so to speak,

a first tentative feeler toward us and had touched the hearts of each

with a horrid directness. And from this moment the Camp changed.

Sangree in particular was visibly upset. He could

not bear to see the girl distressed, and to hear her actually cry was

almost more than he could stand. The feeling that he had no right to

protect her hurt him keenly, and I could see that he was itching to do

something to help, and liked him for it. His expression said plainly

that he would tear in a thousand pieces anything that dared to injure a

hair of her head.

We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to the

men’s quarters, and it was his odd Canadian expression “Gee whiz!” that

drew my attention to a further discovery.

“The brute’s been scratching round my tent too,” he

cried, as he pointed to similar marks by the door and I stooped down to

examine them. We both stared in amazement for several minutes without

speaking.

“Only I sleep like the dead,” he added,

straightening up again, “and so heard nothing, I suppose.”

We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his tent

in a direct line across to the girl’s, but nowhere else about the Camp

was there a sign of the strange visitor. The deer, dog, or whatever it

was that had twice favoured us with a visit in the night, had confined

its attentions to these two tents. And, after all, there was really

nothing out of the way about these visits of an unknown animal, for

although our own island was destitute of life, we were in the heart of

a wilderness, and the mainland and larger islands must be swarming with

all kinds of four-footed creatures, and no very prolonged swimming was

necessary to reach us. In any other country it would not have caused a

moment’s interest—interest of the kind we felt, that is. In our

Canadian camps the bears were for ever grunting about among the

provision bags at night, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and

chipmunks scuttling over everything.

“My daughter is overtired, and that’s the truth of

it,” explained Maloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined

in turn the other paw-marks. “She’s been overdoing it lately, and

camp-life, you know, always means a great excitement to her. It’s

natural enough. If we take no notice she’ll be all right.” He paused to

borrow my tobacco pouch and fill his pipe, and the blundering way he

filled it and spilled the precious weed on the ground visibly belied

the calm of his easy language. “You might take her out for a bit of

fishing, Hubbard, like a good chap; she’s hardly up to the long day in

the cutter. Show her some of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps.

Eh?”

And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as

suddenly, and as suspiciously, as it had come.

But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then

purposely ignored the subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly

spoke to me in a way that again touched the note of sinister alarm—the

note that kept on sounding and sounding until finally John Silence came

with his great vibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after

he came, too, for a while.

“I’m ashamed to ask it,” she said abruptly, as she

steered me home, her sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind,

“and ashamed of my silly tears too, because I really can’t make out

what caused them; but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go

off for your long expeditions—just yet. I beg it of you.” She was so

in earnest that she forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways

and made us roll dangerously. “I have tried hard not to ask this,” she

added, bringing the canoe round again, “but I simply can’t help myself.”

It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my

hesitation was plain; for she went on before I could reply, and her

beseeching expression and intensity of manner impressed me very

forcibly.

“For another two weeks only–- “

“Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight,” I said, seeing

at once what she was driving at, but wondering if it was best to

encourage her or not.

“If I knew you were to be on the island till then,”

she said, her face alternately pale and blushing, and her voice

trembling a little, “I should feel so much happier.”

I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish.

“And safer,” she added almost in a whisper;

“especially—at night, I mean.”

“Safer, Joan?” I repeated, thinking I had

never seen her eyes so soft and tender. She nodded her head, keeping

her gaze fixed on my face.

It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my

thoughts and judgment may have been, and somehow I understood that she

spoke with good reason, though for the life of me I could not have put

it into words.

“Happier—and safer,” she said gravely, the canoe

giving a dangerous lurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my

answer. Perhaps, after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and

make light of it, easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its

cause.

“All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise,”

and the instant look of relief in her face, and the smile that came

back like sunlight to her eyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself

and the world, I was capable of considerable sacrifice after all.

“But, you know, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I

added sharply; and she looked up in my face with the smile women use

when they know we are talking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.

“You don’t feel afraid, I know,” she observed

quietly.

“Of course not; why should I?”

“So, if you will just humour me this once I—I will

never ask anything foolish of you again as long as I live,” she said

gratefully.

“You have my promise,” was all I could find to say.

She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon

lying a quarter of a mile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or

two later she paused again and stared hard at me with the dripping

paddle across the thwarts.

“You’ve not heard anything at night yourself, have

you?” she asked.

“I never hear anything at night,” I replied shortly,

“from the moment I lie down till the moment I get up.”

“That dismal howling, for instance,” she went on,

determined to get it out, “far away at first and then getting closer,

and stopping just outside the Camp?”

“Certainly not.”

“Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it.”

“Most likely you did,” was my unsympathetic

response.

“And you don’t think father has heard it either,

then?”

“No. He would have told me if he had.”

This seemed to relieve her mind a little. “I know

mother hasn’t,” she added, as if speaking to herself, “for she hears

nothing—ever.”

It was two nights after this conversation that I

woke out of deep sleep and heard sounds of screaming.