"Who was he? Did you know him?"
"I thought I did. But I could not see his face."
Clutterbuck watched that forest eagerly, and with a queer suspense in his attitude and even in his breathing. Every now and then he raised his eyes to mine with a question in them. Each time I shook my head, and answered:
"Not yet," and we both again stared at the map.
Then Clutterbuck whispered quickly:
"What if his horse had stumbled? What if he is lying there at the roadside beneath the tree?" He tore himself away from the contemplation of the map. "The thing's magical!" he cried. "It has bewitched you, Steve, and by the Lord it has come near to bewitching me!"
"I thought the horseman was yourself. Why don't you go?" said I, pointing to the map.
Lieutenant Clutterbuck rose impatiently from his chair.
"There must be an end of this. Once for all I will not go. There is no reason I should. There is reason why I should not. You do not know in what you are meddling. You are taken like a schoolboy by an old wife's tale of a lonely girl trapped in a net. You are too old for such follies."
"I was too old a fortnight ago," I returned, "but, by the Lord, these last days I have grown young again--so young that----"