“I’ll ask Jason how he knew that the boy used to come here. I’ll ask him as soon as I get back.”

Get back? Get back where? So he wasn’t going to utter that mandate to his panic-stricken body.⁠ ⁠…

How queer that he had nothing now left to decide! His future was already there, mapped out before him. It was only a matter of following the track. Yes! The track was already there⁠ ⁠… leading back again! All he had to do was to accept it and follow it from moment to moment, like a moving hand that threw a shadow over an unfolded map!

But where did that map, that track, that diagram come from, across which, like a sneaking shadow, he saw himself returning to Pond Cottage?