I slipped off in grayness the next morning. There was a water fog that hugged me clammily, and sounds echoed in it as in a metal canopy. I could not have found my way in open water, but here I could crowd tight to the shore and keep my bearings. I took a keg of pitch with me, for when I saw the weather I knew that I would give the canoe many a scrape on rocks and snags. It was tedious traveling, and it seemed a long time before I made my worming way around every inequality in the shore and reached the inlet where we had eaten lunch. Here I lifted the canoe, turned it bottom side up in the meadow, and covered it with a sailcloth. I wanted it to dry, and the air was still dripping moisture. I had expected the fog to lift before this, but it seemed to be growing heavier. I tried to light my pipe, but the tobacco was damp and would not burn. Slow drops dribbled from the trees and the meadow was soggy. Where should I go? I could hear nothing, and as for seeing anything I could have passed my own camp a rod away. It began to seem a fool's errand. I thought of returning. Perhaps it was a boyish feeling that took me to the sycamore. I looked about. The ashes of our little fire still lay in a rounded pile, and at the edge of the pile, printed deep in the yielding surface, was a moccasin print. It was not the woman's moccasin, nor my own boot. One look showed me that. And then I went over the surrounding ground. I learned nothing, for pebbles and short grass are as non-committal as a Paris pavement. The print had been made before the mist fell, for the dew was unbrushed. I looked at the encircling forest, and its dripping uniformity gave no clue. I knocked the charred tobacco from my pipe, pulled my hat down on my ears, and plunged straight ahead. It was a fool's way of going at the matter, but a fool has as good a chance as a philosopher in such a case. I clove my way through the mist as blind and breathless as a swimmer in a breaker. The forest was thickly grown and the trees stood about me as alike as water-reeds. Whenever I touched one it pelted me with drops, and I was numbed with cold. My feet slipped, for the ground was slimy with wet. But I was not thinking of comfort, nor of speed. I was listening. For the strange, gray air was trembling with echoes. Every snapped twig, every bird murmur, every brush of a padded foot on leaf mould was multiplied many-fold. The fog was a sounding-board. All the spectral space around me, above me, below me was quivering and talking. My very breath was peopled with murmurs. I have been in many fogs, but none like this one. If the spirits of the dead should revisit us, they would whisper, I think, as the air whispered around me then. How long I groped, learning nothing, I do not know, for when the mind forgets the body minutes may be long or short, and no count is taken of them. But at last among the noises that knocked at my ear came a new note. I heard a human voice.