When they reached the outskirts of the wood, however, they saw there was not much chance of rain, but a much worse evil threatened. All the distance on the seaward side was blotted out, a fine white mist shut out the curving land in that direction. It was blowing up towards them, rolling down the little hills in billowy puffs, and lying filmy, yet dense, in the hollows, moved by a wind unfelt here. "A sea fog," Julia said; "I wonder how far it is coming." Rawson-Clew wondered too; he thought, as she did, that there was every chance of its coming far and fast, but it did not seem necessary to either of them to say anything so unpleasantly and obviously probable. They set out homewards as fast as they could; it was a long way to the place where they had climbed up, unfortunately all across open country, entirely without roads or definite paths, and the drifting sea fog was coming up fast, bound, it would seem, the same way. Soon it was upon them; they felt its advance in the chill that, like cold fingers, laid hold on everything; it came quite silently up from behind, without noticeable wind, eerily creeping up and enfolding everything, putting a white winding-sheet not about the earth only, but the very air also. The cotton blouse that Julia wore became limp and wet as if it had been dipped in water; she could see the fog condensing in beads on her companion's coat almost like hoar frost; it lay on every low-growing rose bush and bramble that they stepped upon, a curious transformer of all near objects, a complete obliterator of all more distant ones. They pushed on as quickly as might be, climbing little hills, descending into hollows; stumbling among rabbit holes, threading their way through thickets; apparently finding something amusing in the patriarchal colonies of rabbit burrows that tripped them up, and stopping to argue, though hardly in earnest, as to whether they had passed that way or not, when some white-barked tree, or other landmark, loomed suddenly out of the thickening mist. Once it seemed the fog was going to lift; Julia thought she saw the outline of a distant hill, but either it was closed in again directly, or else she mistook a thicker fold of cloud for a more solid object, for it was lost almost before she pointed it out. For something over two hours they walked and stumbled, and went up small ascents and came down small declines; then suddenly they came upon the white-barked tree again. It was the same one that they had seen more than an hour and a half ago; Rawson-Clew recognised it by a peculiar warty growth where the branches forked; they had now approached it from the other side, but clearly it was the same one, and they had come round in a circle. He stopped and pointed it out to her. "I am afraid," he said, "we had better do what is recommended when the clouds come down on the mountains." "And that is?" Julia asked. "Sit down and wait till they shift."