Who and
what could it be? What should he do, what should all his friends do in the
matter of relation to this unknown thing?
With this day and hour did not come really the beginning of Ab's thought
upon the subject of what was, to him and those he knew, the supernatural.
He had thought in the past--he could not help it--of the shadow and the
echo. He remembered how he and Oak had talked about the echo, and how they
had tried to get rid of the thing which had more than once called back to
them insolently across the valley. Every word they shouted this hidden
creature would mockingly repeat and there was no recourse for them. They
had once fully armed themselves and, in a burst of desperate bravery, had
resolved to find who and what the owner of this voice was and have, at
least, a fight. They had crossed the valley and ranged about the woodland
whence the voice seemed to have come, but they never found what they
sought!
The shadow which pursued them on sunny afternoons had puzzled them in
another way. Very persistent had been the flat, black, earth-clinging and
distorted thing which followed them so everywhere. What was this black,
following thing, anyhow, this thing which swung its unsubstantial body
around as one moved but which ever kept its own feet at the feet of the
pursued, wherever there was no shade, and which lay there beside one so
persistently?
But the echoes and the shadows were nothing as compared with the things
which came to one at night.
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