_For every man,_ _Humble or proud,_ _Mighty or bowed,_ _Death has a shroud;—for every man,—_ _Even for Tchingniz Khan!_ _Behold them pass!—lancer._ _Baroulass,_ _Temple dancer_ _In tissue gold,_ _Khiounnou,_ _Karlik bold,_ _Christian, Jew,—_ _Nations swarm to the great Urdu._ _Yaçaoul, with your kettledrum,_ _Warn your Khan that his hour is come!_ _Shroud and knife at his spurred feet throw,_ _And bid him stretch his neck for the blow!—_” “You know,” remarked Cleves, “that some of those songs you sing are devilish creepy.” Tressa looked around at him over her shoulder, saw he was smiling, smiled faintly in return. They were off Orchid Cove now. The hotel and cottages loomed dimly in the silver mist. Voices came distinctly across the water. There were people on the golf course paralleling the river; laughter sounded from the club-house veranda. They went ashore. CHAPTER VIII THE MAN IN WHITE It was at the sixth hole that they passed the man ahead who was playing all alone—a courteous young fellow in white flannels, who smiled and bowed them “through” in silence. They thanked him, drove from the tee, and left the polite and reticent young man still apparently hunting for a lost ball. Like other things which depended upon dexterity and precision, Tressa had taken most naturally to golf. Her supple muscles helped. At the ninth hole they looked back but did not see the young man in white flannels. Hammock, set with pine and palmetto, and intervals of evil-looking swamp, flanked the course. Rank wire-grass, bayberry and scrub palmetto bounded the fairgreen. On every blossoming bush hung butterflies—Palomedes swallowtails—drugged with sparkle-berry honey, their gold and black velvet wings conspicuous in the sunny mist. “Like the ceremonial vestments of a Yezidee executioner,” murmured the girl. “The Tchortchas wear red when they robe to do a man to death.” “I wish you could forget those things,” said Cleves. “I am trying.... I wonder where that young man in white went.” Cleves searched the links. “I don’t see him. Perhaps he had to go back for another ball.” “I wonder who he was,” she mused. “I don’t remember seeing him before,” said Cleves.... “Shall we start back?” They walked slowly across the course toward the tenth hole. Tressa teed up, drove low and straight. Cleves sliced, and they walked together into the scrub and towards the woods, where his ball had bounded into a bunch of palm trees. Far in among the trees something white moved and vanished. “Probably a white egret,” he remarked, knocking about in the scrub with his midiron. “It was that young man in white flannels,” said Tressa in a low voice. “What would he be doing in there?” he asked incredulously. “That’s merely a jungle, Tressa—swamp and cypress, thorn and creeper,—and no man would go into that mess if he could. There is no bottom to those swamps.” “But I saw him in there,” she said in a troubled voice.