"Who are you?" he asked in a low voice that was strange even in his own ears.
"Am Buchaille", replied the man in a voice as low and strange. "I am the Herdsman."
A new tide of fear surged in upon Alan. That voice, was it not his own; that tone, was it not familiar in his ears? When the man spoke, he heard himself speak; sure, if he were am Buchaille Bàn, Alan, too, was the Herdsman—though what fantastic destiny might be his was all unknown to him.
"Come near," said the man, and now the mocking light in his eyes was lambent as cloud-fire—"come near, oh, Buchaille Bàn!"
With a swift movement Alan leapt forward, but as he leaped his foot caught in a spray of heather and he stumbled and nigh fell. When he recovered himself, he looked in vain for the man who had called him. There was not a sign, not a trace of any living being. For the first few moments he believed it had all been a delusion. Mortal being did not appear and vanish in that ghostly way. Still, surely he could not have mistaken the blank of that place for a speaking voice, nor out of nothingness have fashioned the living phantom of himself? Or could he? With that, he strode forward and peered into the wide arch of the cavern by which the man had stood. He could not see far into it, but so far as it was possible to see, he discerned neither man nor shadow of man, nor any thing that stirred; no, not even the dust of a bearnan-Bride, that grew on a patch of grass a yard or two within the darkness, had lost one of its aërial pinions. He drew back, dismayed. Then, suddenly, his heart leapt again, for, beyond all question, all possible doubt, there, in the bent thyme, just where the man had stood, was the imprint of his feet. Even now the green sprays were moving forward.
[CHAPTER XI]
MYSTERY