He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly.

But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men.
Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concrete
shape of words.

"A cat to match them 'ens--" said Fulcher.

"Ay!" said Witherspoon, "a cat to match they 'ens."

"'Twould be a tiger," said Fulcher.

"More'n a tiger," said Witherspoon....

When at last Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swelling
field that separated Hickleybrow from the sombre pine-shaded hollow in
whose black shadows the gigantic canary-creeper grappled silently with
the Experimental Farm, he followed it alone.

He was distinctly seen to rise against the sky-line, against the warm
clear immensity of the northern sky--for so far public interest followed
him--and to descend again into the night, into an obscurity from which
it would seem he will nevermore emerge. He passed--into a mystery. No
one knows to this day what happened to him after he crossed the brow.
When later on the two Fulchers and Witherspoon, moved by their own
imaginations, came up the hill and stared after him, the flight had
swallowed him up altogether.

The three men stood close. There was not a sound out of the wooded