"What luck, he hasn't heard it."
He moved on again, as silently as before, perhaps a little inclined
to be contemptuous of any one who could fail to notice so plain a
warning, and he supposed that the man he was following must be some
townsman who knew nothing at all of the life of the country and was,
like so many of the dwellers in cities, blind and deaf outside the
range of the noises of the streets and the clamour of passing traffic.
This thought was still in his mind when all at once the steady sound
of footsteps he had been following ceased suddenly and abruptly, cut
off on the instant as you turn off water from a tap.
Dunn paused, too, supposing that for some reason the other had
stopped for a moment and would soon walk on again.
But a minute passed and then another and there was still no sound of
the footsteps beginning again. A little puzzled, Dunn moved
cautiously forward.
He saw nothing, he found nothing, there was no sign at all of the
man he had been following.
It was as though he had vanished bodily from the face of the earth,
and yet how this had happened, or why, or what had become of him,
Dunn could not imagine, for this spot was, it seemed, in the very
heart of the wood, there was no shelter of any sort or kind anywhere
near, and though there were trees all round just the ground was
fairly open.
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