There was a mist of fog. It had begun to gather over the lowland. We had noticed it—a white blanket lying on the fields as we came along. It was now rising, but it came up slowly as though it were a sort of impalpable stratum formed mysteriously out of the earth and extending, under some mathematical direction, upward. It was like a piece of enchantment in the manner in which the thing arose. It now lay on the world about us extending to the macadam road.
Mooney took a flash light out of his pocket.
It was not the usual cylinder affair. It was, rather, a little squat lantern with a bull’s-eye bulb; thick—necessarily so, I imagine—for there was a powerful light concentrated on the small disc and it, therefore, required a considerable battery.
He looked at the clock on the motor.
“We shall have some time to wait,” he said, “but the fog may increase and we ought to look over the ground.”
I got up to get out of the car, when he put his hand on my arm.
“My son,” he said, “the bloodhound will be no friend of ours; let us think of him before he thinks of us.”
He went on in a drawling voice.
“Every little sheriff,” he said, “has fitted himself out with one of these trailing beasts.”
Then he laughed.