He came in about an hour to the dip which, as he had surmised,
was the edge of a considerable valley. He ran down the slope,
and looked all about for some place of shelter, a thick windbreak
in the lee of a hill, or an outcropping of stone, but he saw
neither, and, as he continued the search, he came to marshy
ground. He saw ahead among the weeds and bushes the gleam of
standing pools, and he was about to turn back, when he noticed
three or four stones, in a row and about a yard from one another,
projecting slightly above the black muck. It struck him that the
stones would not naturally be in the soft mud, and, his curiosity
aroused, he stepped lightly from one stone to another. When he
came to the last stone that he had seen from the hard ground he
beheld several more that had been hidden from him by the bushes.
Sure now that he had happened upon something not created by
nature alone, he followed these stones, leading like steps into
the very depths of the swamp, which was now deep and dark with
ooze all about him. He no longer doubted that the stones, the
artificial presence of which might have escaped the keenest eye
and most logical mind, were placed there for a purpose, and he
was resolved to know its nature.

The stepping stones led him about sixty yards into the swamp, and
the last thirty yards were at an angle from the first thirty.
Then he came to a bit of hard ground, a tiny islet in the mire,
upon which he could stand without sinking at all. He looked back
from there, and he could not see his point of departure. Bushes,
weeds, and saplings grew out of the swamp to a height of a dozen
or fifteen feet, and he was inclosed completely. All the
vegetation dripped with cold water, and the place was one of the
most dismal that he had ever seen. But he had no thought of