18/27 "There are no hoof-prints," he said. None can have passed for some hours." A rotted log, streaked with velvet moss and blotched with fan-shaped, orange-colored fungi, lay by the wayside, and the two sat down upon it to wait for the coming horseman. Overhead the thunder was rolling, but there was as yet no breath of wind, no splash of raindrops. Opposite them rose a gigantic pine, towering above the forest, red-brown trunk and ultimate cone of deep green foliage alike outlined against the dead gloom of the sky. |