"It was nothing compared to this. I'd sooner walk through a foot and a half of snow than through such a fog. It gets into the eyes, and into the chest, and into the head; you can squeeze it through your fingers. When it's snow you know where you are; there it is, at your feet; it don't mount. It gives a man fair play; this don't. I've been looking for you everywhere. Where did you get to?" "Hard to say. As fur as I know I haven't been off my beat." "Same here. Anything to report?" "No. Have you?" Constable Applebee gave no direct reply, but branched off into what, apparently, was another subject. "Look here, Pond. Are you a nervous man?" "Not particularly," answered Constable Pond, with a timid look around. "But you don't like this sort of thing?" "Who would?" "Ah, you may say that. If fog was fog, and nothing else, I'd put up with it. And why? Because we've got to." "A true bill," said Constable Pond, assenting. "But it brings something else along with it. That's what I complain of--and what I mostly complain of is shadders." "What do you mean?" inquired Constable Pond. "What I say. Shadders. I don't call _my_self a nervous man, but when you see something stealing along a yard or two ahead of you, and you go to lay hold of it and it vanishes--yes, Pond, vanishes--it's enough to give a man the creeps." "It'd give _me_ the creeps." "Very well, then," said Constable Applebee, as though a matter which had been in dispute was now settled. "Put a substantial body in my way and I'll tackle it. But how _can_ you tackle it when it melts and disappears? You call out, 'Now, then, what are you up to?' and you don't get a whisper in reply. Ain't that enough to aggravate a man?" "More than enough; I know how I should feel over it. But look here, Applebee, it ain't imagination, is it?" "Imagination!" exclaimed Constable Applebee, in a voice of scorn. "What! Me! Why, I don't suppose, from the day I was born to this blessed night of white fog, that if it was all reckoned up I've had imagination enough to fill a two-ounce bottle." This new view of the quality of imagination in relation to quantity seemed to impress Constable Pond, who turned it over in his mind without feeling himself equal to offer an opinion on it. "A fog like this always serves me the same way," said Constable Applebee. "There was a black fog when I was born I've heard my mother often say. That's why, perhaps." "But what happened?" asked Constable Pond. "You haven't told me that." "This happened. I see a shadder creeping along the wall. I foller it till I'm within half-a-dozen yards. Then I stop and hail it. The minute it hears my voice it gives a start, and when I run forward to lay hands on it, it vanishes." "You've got," said Constable Pond, admiringly, "the heart of a lion. I don't bring to mind that there's any orders about taking up shadders. Bodies, yes. Shadders, no."