SON OF THE WIND
His forehead wrinkled in anxiety to make out what sort of thing he was seeing.
Ferrier swung around on his heel. "Oh Lord!" he said.
The apparition was no dreadful one. It was planted leg-deep in the middle of the stream, the body a little crouched together, the head held low on a stretched neck, elbows bent, hands carried forward—no, those must be paws. It was an animal that had scented, just risen to its hind legs for observation. Carron watched to see it drop back on all fours, and experienced a vague uneasy astonishment when it began to move forward still upright on two feet, wading through the ford. With each step forward the animal aspect melted; by the time it had climbed the bank and emerged upon the level the illusion was gone; yet, what remained, or rather what had evolved itself, though it was not beast, certainly was scarcely human. It was in fact that being which Ferrier had never called his brother, and which as it advanced, appeared indeed to have no relation to the man on the road, or to any man. A shaggy deity of the forest might have stared with such foreign, incommunicable eyes, not cruel, not crafty, not even vacant, but containing nothing human intelligence can understand. Behind him the sound of horses' feet was audible, tramping, con-
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