I am not a superstitious man. Indeed superstition, which is inseparablybound up with ignorance or disregard of evidence, would ill accord withthe silken gown of a King's Counsel. And still less am I tainted withthat particular form of superstition in which the fetishism of barbarousand primitive man is incongruously revived in a population of, at leastnominally, educated persons, by the use of charms, amulets, mascots andthe like.Had it been otherwise; had I been the subject of this curious atavistictendency, I should surely have been led to believe that from the simplegem whose name I have used to give a title to this chronicle, some subtleinfluence exhaled whereby the whole course of my life was directed intonew channels. But I do not believe anything of the kind; and therefore,though it did actually happen that the appearance of the Cat's Eye wascoincident with a radical change in the course and manner of my life, andeven, as it seemed, with my very personality; and though with the Cat'sEye the unfolding of the new life seemed constantly associated; still Iwould have it understood that I use the name merely as a label to dockettogether a succession of events that form a consistent and natural group.The particular train of events with which this history deals began on acertain evening near the end of the long vacation. It was a cloudyevening, I remember, and very dark, for it was past eight o'clock and thedays were drawing in rapidly. I was returning across Hampstead Heathtowards my lodgings in the village, and was crossing the broken,gorse-covered and wooded hollow to the west of the Spaniards Road, when Iheard the footsteps of someone running, and running swiftly, as I couldjudge by the rapid rhythm of the footfalls and the sound of scatteringgravel. I halted to listen, noting that the rhythm of the footsteps wasslightly irregular, like the ticking of an ill-adjusted clock; and evenas I halted, I saw the runner. But only for a moment, and then but dimly.The vague shape of a man came out of the gloom, passed swiftly across myfield of vision, and was gone. I could not see what he was like. The dimshape appeared and vanished into the darkness, leaving me standingmotionless, listening with vague suspicion to the now faint footfalls andwondering what I ought to do.Suddenly the silence was rent by a piercing cry, the cry of a womancalling for help. And, strangely enough, it came from the oppositedirection to that towards which the fugitive was running. In an instant Iturned and raced across the rugged hollow towards the spot from whencethe sound seemed to come, and as I scrambled up a gravelly hillock I saw,faintly silhouetted on the murky skyline of some rising ground ahead, thefigures of a man and a woman struggling together; and I had just notedthat the man seemed to be trying to escape when I saw him deal the womana blow, on which she uttered a shriek and fell, while the man, havingwrenched himself free, darted down the farther slope and vanished intothe encompassing darkness.When I reached the woman she was sitting up with her right hand pressedto her side, and as I approached she called out sharply:'Follow him! Follow that man! Never mind me!'I stood for a moment irresolute, for on the hand that was pressed to herside I had noticed a smear of blood. But as I hesitated, she repeated:'Follow him! Don't let him escape! He has just committed a dreadfulmurder!'