fringing ferns, I could just make out a blot in the greyness where he sat upright, like a watching catamount under the stars.

Then, across the dimness, another blot moved to join him; and I felt my hair stir as chilling certainty shocked from me my lingering hope that I had been mistaken.

Faintly — oh, scarce audible at all — the murmur of two voices came to me there where I lay under the misty lustre of the stars. Nearer, nearer I crept, nearer, nearer, until I lay flat as a shadow there, stark on the shelf of rock. And, as though they had heard me, and as if to spite me, their voices sank to whispers. Yet, I knew of a certainty that I had neither been observed nor heard.

Hushed voices, whispers, undertones as soft as summer night winds