his very words: like the crackling of a bonfire," finished the soldier,
with a repetition of his short laugh.

"Most interesting," Dr. Silence observed gravely. "Please omit nothing."

"Yes," he went on, "and it was soon after that the fires began--the
fires in the wood. They started mysteriously burning in the patches of
coarse white grass that cover the more open parts of the plantation. No
one ever actually saw them start, but many, myself among the number,
have seen them burning and smouldering. They are always small and
circular in shape, and for all the world like a picnic fire. The head
keeper has a dozen explanations, from sparks flying out of the house
chimneys to the sunlight focusing through a dewdrop, but none of them, I
must admit, convince me as being in the least likely or probable. They
are most singular, I consider, most singular, these mysterious fires,
and I am glad to say that they come only at rather long intervals and
never seem to spread.

"But the keeper had other queer stories as well, and about things that
are verifiable. He declared that no life ever willingly entered the
plantation; more, that no life existed in it at all. No birds nested in
the trees, or flew into their shade. He set countless traps, but never
caught so much as a rabbit or a weasel. Animals avoided it, and more
than once he had picked up dead creatures round the edges that bore no
obvious signs of how they had met their death.

"Moreover, he told me one extraordinary tale about his retriever chasing
some invisible creature across the field one day when he was out with
his gun. The dog suddenly pointed at something in the field at his feet,
and then gave chase, yelping like a mad thing. It followed its imaginary