burnt off and withered as though with sudden heat.

Tony West straightened himself.

"If I didn't think the whole business was a pack of lies spun into a
bigger one by a lot of village gossips, I'd--I'd begin to imagine there
was something in the story after all!" he said, getting to his feet and
looking at the white faces about him. "It's--it's devilish uncanny,
Doctor!"

"It is that." The doctor drew a long breath and stroked his beard
agitatedly. "It's so devilish uncanny that one hardly knows what to
believe. If this thing had happened in the East one might have looked
at it with a more fatalistic eye. But _here_--in England, no man in his
senses could believe such a fool's tale as that which Nigel told us
to-night. And yet--Wynne has gone, vanished! Never a trace of him,
though we'll search still farther for a while, to make sure!"

They separated at once, radiating out from that sinister spot and
searched and searched and searched. Not a footprint was to be found
beyond the spot, not a trace of any living thing. There was nothing for
it but to go back to Merriton Towers and tell their tale to Nigel.

"Old Wynne has gone, and no mistake," said Tony West, as the men began
slowly to retrace their steps across the marshlands, their faces in the
pale light of the early morning looking white and drawn with the
excitement and strain of the night. "What to make of it all, I don't
know. Apparently old Wynne went out to see the Frozen Flames and--the
Frozen Flames have swallowed him up, or burnt him up, one or the other."