The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the trees revealed the scene tolerably well.  There stood the tent behind him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake, white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the clearer spaces of the Bush—­everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.  But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide—­still, doubtless, flying at frantic speed through the frozen woods.  There was not even the sound of disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice.  He had gone—­utterly.

There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so strongly left behind about the camp; and—­this penetrating, all-pervading odor.

And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn.  In spite of his exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of the mind.  And he failed.  It was gone before he could properly seize or name it.  Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew.  Acrid rather, not unlike the odor of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the odor of a big forest.  Yet the “odor of lions” is the phrase with which he usually sums it all up.

Then—­it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the helpless prey of anything that chose to happen.  Had a muskrat poked its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado and fainted.  For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.

Nothing did happen, however.  A great kiss of wind ran softly through the awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled tremblingly to earth.  The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.  Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort, realized next that he was alone in the Bush—­and that he was called upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.

Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile one.  With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar bewilderment:  he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide: