"Sir! Sir! Where are you? Is anything-?'
The other voice answered faintly, as though it said something like, "Here!" As he tried to follow the direction of that sound, Bennett recognized something from a description. He recognized the narrow avenue of evergreens curving down to broaden into a big circular coppice of trees, to the pavilion called the Queen's Mirror. And he thought he recognized the voice of John Bohun. That was when he began to run.
His shoes were already soaked and freezing in any case, and the crust of snow was only half an inch deep. One single line of tracks led before him down the slope to the evergreens. They were fresh tracks, he could see by their new featheriness, made only a very short time before. He followed them along the path, thirty odd feet between the evergreens, and emerged into the ragged coppice. It was impossible to see anything clearly except the dull white of the pavilion, which stood in the middle of a snow-crusted clearing measuring half an acre. In a square about it, extending out about sixty feet with the pavilion in the center, ran a low marble coping. A higher stone pathway cut through it to the open door of the low marble house. The line of tracks went up to that front door. But no tracks came out.
A figure appeared in that doorway, with such eerie suddenness that Bennett stopped dead; his heart was knocking and his throat felt raw. The figure was a dark blur against the gray. It put one arm over its eyes and leaned the arm rockily, like a hurt child, against the doorpost. Bennett heard it sob.
As he stepped forward, his foot crackled in the snow and the figure looked up. "Who's there?" said John Bohun's voice, going suddenly high. "Who-?”
As though he were fiercely straightening himself, he came a little out of the shadow in the doorway. Even at that great distance in the half-light Bennett could see the narrow rounded outline of riding-breeches; but the face under the low-drawn cap was a blur, although it seemed to be shaking. Question and answer echoed thinly across the clearing. Far away Bennett could hear the dog howling again.
"I've just got here," he said. "I — what — '
"Come here," said Bohun.
Bennett ran obliquely across the clearing. He did not follow the footsteps that went up and across the stone path to the door. He saw the sixty feet of flat snow-covered space that surrounded the pavilion, and thought it was a lawn. His foot had almost touched the low coping when Bohun spoke again.
"Don't step on that!" he cried, his voice breaking. `Don't step on that, you damned fool. It's thin ice. That's the lake. You'll go through —'