at was left of one.
The skull was separated from the trunk and the dry rib-bones were mostly
scattered, while those of the limbs still held together. But just
beside it was the unmistakable remnant of what had been a fire, and a
large one at that.

"What does it mean?" said Denham. "Some poor devil got lost, and died
of starvation beside his own fire?"

Verna shook her head. She was gazing down thoughtfully at the white
bones and their surroundings.

"That's not the reading of it," she said. "That's no white man's skull.
Look at the teeth. Further, its owner's end was not starvation."

"How knowest thou that, O Sherlock Holmes up to date?" Denham had
picked up the skull and was examining it with interest. "At any rate,
he didn't die from a bang on the head."

"No; but he was killed, all the same, by others."

"Sherlock Holmes again. Go on."

"Well, no self-respecting native with the fear of _Inswelaboya_ and
other horrors of the night before his eyes, that is to say, any native,
would dream of coming in here alone for anything you could offer him."

"Wait a bit, Sherlock," laughed the other. "I think I've got you on one
point. You said `horrors of the night.' How do you know it was night?"

"I deduce it from the size of the fire. Such a big one as it was would
never have been built in the daytime. There must have been several in
it; the ground is too dry for tracks to show, but for some reason or
other this one has been killed by the rest."

"Verna, you are simply wonderful. Talk about woodcraft!"

She looked pleased.

"Well," she said, "I know the people and their ways. Not only that"--
looking rather serious--"I hear and overhear things that you wouldn't
understand, or rather wouldn't be able to get behind even if you had a
fair amount of the language at your disposal, and you're not making a
bad progress under my poor tuition, Alaric."

"Delighted. Only it isn't `poor.'"

She made laughing rejoinder, and these two happy people talked on
lightly, or half seriously by turns, rejoicing ill their newly-welded
happiness. And the skull stared drearily up from the ground, sad relic
of a fellow-creature done to death here in the forest gloom amid every
circumstance of torment and blood.

"Hallo! what's the matter with the gees?" said Denham suddenly. "They
seem unhappy about something, and it can't be only about this old
skull."

For the horses were showing great uneasiness, snorting and