Jonathan agreed. He put down his empty cup, pulled his cap down over his brows, and set out for home. From Anstey’s cottage, as from the Fullaloves’ bungalow, it was far shorter to go downhill through Groaning Spinney than to walk back to the village and take the lane from the stable courtyard. He spent little time weighing up the chances. He knew that the short route was the hard route, but the evening was already drawing in and he had faith enough in his own powers to decide upon chancing the snowdrifts.

He struck off across a flattish field and kept close to the snow-covered hedge. Soon he reached the rough and pitted ground which separated the arable from the meadow and the wood. Here the going was extremely difficult, and he floundered his way down banks, and once went into a deepish hole and had to scramble out again.

Suddenly he caught his breath. His heart hammered, and a pulse jumped just behind his eyes. He had never credited the story of the parson’s ghost, but he had been in some strange parts of the world and had seen some strange things, particularly in the West Indies and in connection with African witch-doctors. What he saw before him now, in the magic dusk of the snowdrifts, was the ghost in person, slumped over the five-barred gate in the position which village tradition assigned to it.

The story of the Abominable Snowman was immediately in Jonathan’s mind. There was plenty of evidence for the existence of some monstrosity on the higher slopes of the Himalayas, and it flashed across his thoughts that here, perhaps, was something brought out of nothingness by the snow itself; a thing of fearful import; a creature, and yet not such because it was an emanation and nothing created.

Then he pulled himself together and floundered forward to discover what it was. He knew before he reached it. It was no ghost or demon, but a man dusted over into ghostliness by this last fall of the snow; and he had not been there on Jonathan’s outward journey.

Jonathan climbed the gate to get round to the front of the man. It was Bill Fullalove, and there was no doubt whatever that he was dead. Moreover, he was already so stiff that Jonathan could not do more than ascertain beyond doubt that there was no way to help him. He had to leave him there whilst he himself, regardless of traps such as half-buried branches, and holes in the ground now filled with the drifted snow, plunged into the wood, and, instead of taking the short track homewards, went to call on Will North and send him down for the village policeman whilst he himself went for the doctor.