With this day and hour did not come really the beginning of Ab's thought upon the subject of what was, to him and those he knew, the supernatural. He had thought in the past--he could not help it--of the shadow and the echo. He remembered how he and Oak had talked about the echo, and how they had tried to get rid of the thing which had more than once called back to them insolently across the valley. Every word they shouted this hidden creature would mockingly repeat and there was no recourse for them. They had once fully armed themselves and, in a burst of desperate bravery, had resolved to find who and what the owner of this voice was and have, at least, a fight. They had crossed the valley and ranged about the woodland whence the voice seemed to have come, but they never found what they sought! The shadow which pursued them on sunny afternoons had puzzled them in another way. Very persistent had been the flat, black, earth-clinging and distorted thing which followed them so everywhere. What was this black, following thing, anyhow, this thing which swung its unsubstantial body around as one moved but which ever kept its own feet at the feet of the pursued, wherever there was no shade, and which lay there beside one so persistently? But the echoes and the shadows were nothing as compared with the things which came to one at night. What were those creatures which came when a man was sleeping? Why did they escape with the dawn and appear again only when he was asleep and helpless, at least until he awoke fairly and seized his ax? The sun rose high and dropped slowly down toward the west, where the far ocean was, and the shadows somewhat lengthened, but it was still light along the forest pathways and the untiring man still hurried on. He was now close to his country and becoming careless and at ease. But his imagination was still busy; he could not free himself of memory. There came to him still the vision of the friend he had buried, hiding his face first of all. The frenzy of his wish for knowing rushed again upon him. Where was Oak now? he demanded of himself and of all nature. "Where is Oak?" he yelled to the familiar trees beside his path. But the trees, even to the cave man, so close to them in the economy of wild life, so like them in his naturalness, could give no answer.