“This is the road to the Ireland Vlaie,” said the trooper. “It is possible for cars for another mile only.”
Splendid spruce, pine, oak, maple, and hemlock fringed the swampy, uneven trail which was no more than a wide, rough vista cut through the forest.
And, as the trooper had said, a little more than a mile farther the trail became a tangle of bushes and swale; the car slowed down and stopped; and a man rose from where he was seated on a mossy log and came forward, his rifle balanced across the hollow of his left arm.
The man was Alek Selden.
It was long after dark and they were still travelling through pathless woods by the aid of their electric torches.
There was little underbrush; the forest of spruce and hemlock was first growth.
Cleves shined the trees but could discover no blazing, no trodden path.
In explanation, Selden said briefly that he had hunted the territory for years.
“But I don’t begin to know it,” he added. “There are vast and ugly regions of bog and swale where a sea of alders stretches to the horizon. There are desolate wastes of cat-briers and witch-hopple under leprous tangles of grey birches, where stealthy little brooks darkle deep under matted débris. Only wild things can travel such country.