CHAPTER V. THE TOMB OF DREAMS.
Sheldon gave over asking himself unanswerable questions and hurried on around the end of the lake and into the forest beyond where the lithe racing figure had shot through the shadows like a shimmering gleam of light.
He found her trail and followed it easily, for it ran in a straight line and through a meadow where the grass stood tall and had broken before her.
Only infrequently did it swerve to right or left to avoid one of the big trees in her path. As Sheldon went on he saw many a field flower or tuft of grass which she had bent in her passing straighten up; it seemed to him almost that they were sentient little creatures seeking to tell him “She went this way!”
He was fully prepared to follow the track of her wild flight across miles if need be, his one hope being that she continued in a meadow like this which held the sign of her going. He was no longer running at the top speed with which the chase had begun, nor was he walking as he had been for a moment while she swam. His gait had settled down into a steady, hammering pace which he could keep up for an hour, his one hope being now to win with his greater endurance.
For the most part his eyes kept to the ground that he might not lose the trail and much precious time finding it again. Only now and then would he glance up, to right or left, to make certain that she had not turned out at last to double back or seek shelter in the mountain slopes.
And as he came plunging with accelerated speed down a gentle incline, swinging about a grove of young firs which stood with outflung branches interlacing so that they made a dense dark wall, his eyes were upon the ground, watchful for her trail.
For a second he lost it; then, without checking his speed he found it, turning again, a very little, this time to the left to avoid a second thickly massed group of young firs.
He ran around this, swerved again a very little as he came up out of the hollow and to a flat open space, saw the track leading straight across the level sward, entered a larger grove of firs, lost the trail for a dozen steps, ran on, shot out of the grove and—came to a dead halt, staring in utter amazement.
If at that moment he had been asked who in all the wide world was the simon-pure king of fools, he would have answered in unqualified vehemence, “John Sheldon!”