It was a somber night, but he felt his way along the field fence to the line fence and climbed that into the road that was visible as a less intense darkness on the black darkness of the grass.  Yan walked on up the middle cautiously.  His heart beat violently and his hands were cold.  It was a still night, and once or twice little mousey sounds in the fence corner made him start, but he pushed on.  Suddenly in the blackness to the right of the road he heard a loud “whisk,” then he caught sight of a white thing that chilled his blood.  It was the shape of a man wrapped in white, but lacked a head, just as the story had it.  Yan stood frozen to the ground.  Then his intellect came to the rescue of his trembling body.  “What nonsense!  It must be a white stone.”  But no, it moved.  Yan had a big stick in his hand.  He shouted:  “Sh, sh, sh!” Again the “corpse” moved.  Yan groped on the road for some stones and sent one straight at the “white thing.”  He heard a “whooff” and a rush.  The “white thing” sprang up and ran past him with a clatter that told him he had been scared by Granny de Neuville’s white-faced cow.  At first the reaction made him weak at the knees, but that gave way to a better feeling.  If a harmless old Cow could lie out there all night, why should he fear?  He went on more quietly till he neared the rise in the road.  He should soon see the little Elm.  He kept to the left of the highway and peered into the gloom, going more slowly.  He was not so near as he had supposed, and the tension of the early part of the expedition was coming back more than ever.  He wondered if he had not passed the Elm—­should he go back?  But no, he could not bear the idea; that would mean retreat.  Anyhow, he would put his chalk mark here to show how far he did get.  He sneaked cautiously toward the fence to make it, then to his relief made out the Elm not twenty-five feet away.  Once at the tree, he counted off the four panels westward and knew that he was opposite the grave of the suicide.  It must now be nearly midnight.  He thought he heard sounds not far away, and there across the road he saw a whitish thing—­the headstone.  He was greatly agitated as he crawled quietly as possible toward it.  Why quietly he did not know.  He stumbled through the mud of the shallow ditch at each side, reached the white stone, and groped with clammy, cold hands over the surface for the string.  If Caleb had put it there it was gone now.  So he took his chalk and wrote on the stone “Yan.”

Oh, what a scraping that chalk made!  He searched about with his fingers around the big boulder.  Yes, there it was; the wind, no doubt, had blown it off.  He pulled it toward him.  The pebble was drawn across the boulder with another and louder rasping that sounded fearfully in the night.  Then at once a gasp, a scuffle, a rush, a splash of something in mud, or water—­horrible sounds of a being choking, strangling or trying to speak.  For a moment Yan sank down in terror.  His lips refused to move.  But the remembrance of the cow came to help him.  He got up and ran down the road as fast as he could go, a cold sweat on him.  He ran so blindly he almost ran into a man who shouted “Ho, Yan; is that you?” It was Caleb coming to meet him.  Yan could not speak.  He was trembling so violently that he had to cling to the Trapper’s arm.