Accepting the proffered aid, Rebecca found herself in the midst of a thicket of bushes, many of which were thorny and all of which seemed bent upon repelling nocturnal adventurers.
Droop, going ahead, did his best to draw aside the obstinate twigs, and Rebecca followed him with half-averted head, lifting her skirts and walking sidewise.
"'Mighty lucky, 'tain't wet weather!" she mumbled.
At that moment her guide stood still.
"There!" he exclaimed, in a low, half-awed voice.
Rebecca stopped and gazed about. A little to the right the dark gray of the sky was cut by a looming black mass of uncertain form.
It looked like the crouching phantom of some shapeless sea-monster. Rebecca half expected to see it dissolve like a wind-driven fog.
Their physical sight could distinguish nothing of the outer characteristics of this mysterious structure; but for this very reason, the imagination was the more active. Rebecca, with all her directness of nature and commonplace experience, felt in this unwonted presence that sense of awed mystery which she would have called a "creepy feeling."
What unknown and incomprehensible forces were locked within that formless mass? By what manner of race as yet unborn had its elements been brought together—no, no—would they be brought together? How assume a comfortable mental attitude toward this creation whose present existence so long antedated its own origin?
One sentiment, at least, Rebecca could entertain with hearty consistency. Curiosity asserted its supremacy over every other feeling.