Read Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 for Free Online Page B

as though in another world, I heard
the rising of the wind that was beating the snow into great drifts - but that
was outside the Devil's Croft.

             VI
     
                  "Eyes of fire!"
                   It proves something for human habit and
narcotic-dependence that my first action upon rising was to pull out a
cigarette and light it.
                   The match flared briefly upon rich greenness.
I might have been in a subtropical swamp. Then the little flame winked out and
the only glow was the tip of my cigarette. I gazed upward for a glimpse of the
sky, but found only darkness. Leafy branches made a roof over me. My brow felt
damp. It was sweat - warm sweat.
                   I held the coal of the cigarette to my
wrist-watch. It seemed to have stopped, and I lifted it to my ear. No ticking -
undoubtedly I had jammed it into silence, perhaps at the seance, perhaps during
my escape from prison and the mob. The hands pointed to eighteen minutes past
eight, and it was certainly much later than that. I wished for the electric
torch that I had dropped in the dining room at Gird's, then was glad I had not brought it to flash my position to possible watchers outside
the grove.
                   Yet the tight cedar hedge and the inner belts
of trees and bushes, richly foliaged as they must be, would certainly hide me
and any light I might make. I felt considerably stronger in body and will by
now, and made shift to walk gropingly toward the center of the timber-clump.
Once, stooping to finger the ground on which I walked, I felt not only moss but
soft grass. Again, a hanging vine dragged across my face. It was wet, as if
from condensed mist, and it bore sweet flowers that showed dimly like little
pallid trumpets in the dark.
                   The frog-like chirping that I had heard when
first I fell had been going on without cessation. It was much nearer now, and
when I turned in its direction, I saw a little glimmer of water. Two more
careful steps, and my foot sank into wet, warm mud. I
stooped and put a hand into a tiny stream, almost as warm as the air. The frog,
whose home I was disturbing, fell silent once more.
                   I struck a match, hoping to see a way across.
The stream was not more than three feet in width, and it flowed slowly from the
interior of the grove. In that direction hung low mists, through which broad
leaves gleamed wetly. On my side its brink was fairly clear, but on the other
grew lush, dripping bushes. I felt in the stream once more, and found it was
little more than a finger deep. Then, holding the end of the match in my fingers,
I stooped as low as possible, to see what I could of the nature of the ground
beneath the bushes.
                   The small beam carried far, and I let myself
think of Shakespeare's philosophy anent the candle and the good deed in a
naughty world.
                   Then philosophy and Shakespeare flew from my
mind, for I saw beneath the bushes the feet of - of what stood behind them.
                   They were two in number, those feet; but not
even at first glimpse did I think they were human. I had an impression of round
pedestals and calfless shanks, dark and hairy. They moved as I looked, moved
cautiously closer, as if their owner was equally anxious to see me. I dropped
the match into the stream and sprang up and back.
                   No pursuer from the town would have feet like
that.
                   My heart began to pound as it had never
pounded during my race for life. I clutched at the low limb of a tree, hoping
to tear it loose for a possible weapon of defense; the wood was rotten, and
almost crumpled in my grasp.
                   "Who's there?" I challenged, but
most unsteadily and without much menace in my voice. For answer the bushes
rustled yet again, and something blacker than they showed