ed, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy
and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it
is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united
and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager
and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as
it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was a
bone.

Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.

"We want Doctor Brown here," he said. "This may be the bone of some
animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well." Then he broke
off, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.

After another half hour's effort Paynter had occasion to remark, "It
must have been rather a large dog." There were already a heap of such
white fragments at his feet.

"I have seen nothing yet," said Ashe, speaking more plainly. "That is
certainly a human bone." "I fancy this must be a human bone," said the
American.

And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.

There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curve
that holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holes
that had held human eyes. But just above that on the left was another
and smaller black hole, which was not an eye.

Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort: "We may admit it
is a man without admitting it is--any particular man. There may be
something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may have
tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain natural
processes, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, even
without the skill of any assassin. We want the doctor again."

Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested that
he hardly believed his own words.

"Haven't you got poor Vane's hat there?"

He took it from the silent American's hand, and with a sort of hurry
fitted it on the bony head.

"Don't!" said the other involuntarily.

The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the hole
in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.

"I have the better right to shrink," he said steadily, but in a vibrant
voice. "I think I am the older friend."

Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification.
The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging
apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his