the upright of
white oak.

I was in a tiny room--a closet, lighted by a slit of a window.
Everywhere around me in the dust were small moccasin prints, pointing in
every direction. I could see no door in the wooden walls of the closet,
but I stepped out of the stair-well and leaned over, examining the
moccasin tracks, tracing them, until I found a spot where they led
straight up to the wall; and there were no returning tracks to be seen.
A chill crept over me; only a specter could pass through a solid wall.
The next moment I had bent, ear flattened to the wooden wainscot. _There
was something moving in the next room!_

CHAPTER XII

THENDARA

Motionless, intent, holding my breath, I listened at the paneled wall.
Through the wainscot I could hear the low rustling of paper; and I
seemed to sense some heavier movement within, though the solid floor
did not creak, nor a window quiver, nor a footfall sound.

And now my eyes began traveling cautiously over the paneled wall,
against which I had laid my ear. No crack or seam indicated a hidden
door, yet I knew there must be one, and gently pressed the wainscot
with my shoulder. It gave, almost imperceptibly; I pressed again, and
the hidden door opened a hair's breadth, a finger's breadth, an inch,
widening, widening noiselessly; and I bent forward and peered into
another closet like the one I stood in, also lighted by a loop for
rifle-fire. As my head advanced, first a corner of the floor littered
with papers came into my range of vision, then an angle of the wall,
then a shadowy something which I could not at first make out--and I
opened the door a little wider--scarcely an inch--holding it there.

The shadowy something moved; it was a human foot; and the next instant
my eyes fell on a figure, partly in shade, partly in the light from the
loophole--an Indian, kneeling, absorbed in deciphering a document held
flat on the bare floor.

Astounded, almost incredulous, I glared at the vision. Gradually the
shock of the surprise subsided; details took shape under my wondering
eyes--the slim legs, doubled under, clothed with fringed and beaded
leggings to the hips, the gorgeously embroidered sporran, moccasins, and
clout, the smooth, naked back, gleaming like palest amber under curtains
of stiffly strung scarlet-and-gold traders' wampum--traders' wampum?
What did _that_ mean? And what did those heavy, double masses of hair
indicate--those soft, twisted ropes of glossy