I was listening.
For the strange, gray air was trembling with echoes. Every snapped
twig, every bird murmur, every brush of a padded foot on leaf mould was
multiplied many-fold. The fog was a sounding-board. All the spectral
space around me, above me, below me was quivering and talking. My very
breath was peopled with murmurs. I have been in many fogs, but none
like this one. If the spirits of the dead should revisit us, they
would whisper, I think, as the air whispered around me then.
How long I groped, learning nothing, I do not know, for when the mind
forgets the body minutes may be long or short, and no count is taken of
them. But at last among the noises that knocked at my ear came a new
note. I heard a human voice.
And then, indeed, I pressed all my faculties into service. I put my
ear to the wet ground and strained it against tree trunks, trying to
weed out the myriad tiny whisperings that assailed me and grasp that
one sound that I wanted and hold it clear. And at last I heard it
unmistakably; there were voices, more than one it seemed.
My ears buzzed with my effort to listen. I heard the sound, lost it,
then heard it again. It was like a child's game. I heard it,
blundered after it, then it disappeared.
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