the light spade we had brought with us, I slipped noiselessly out of the
cave. I found the bodies of our two enemies without any trouble, but, to
my great surprise, there was no trace of Cumshaw. He had disappeared as
utterly as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him. True, there
were broken branches and snapped twigs galore, but of signs that would
show me where the body had been taken or what had happened after I had
left, there was absolutely none. For the moment I wondered if it had all
been but a vivid dream, but the sight of the torn and scarred ground and
the memory of the other two bodies told me that it was only too real.
Obviously then the corpse had been moved, but where or by whom I could
not say.

I spent the next half-hour in scouring the valley from end to end, yet
when I had finished I was compelled to admit that I was no nearer to a
solution than before. All the time, of course, there was a perfectly
simple explanation staring me in the face, but it was so infernally
obvious that I missed it.

As my search had not led me any further forward, I shut the matter out
of my mind for the present and turned to the less engrossing though
certainly more pressing task of burying the bodies that remained. The
spot I chose for the grave seemed rather familiar to me, but for the
moment I could not say just what it brought to my mind. I pegged away
with the spade, and had already dug a fair-sized hole when,
unexpectedly, the further side of the grave caved in. I swore under my
breath at this brilliant result of my efforts, and, with the intention
of clearing away the rubble, thrust my spade deep into the loose earth.
It met with a solid obstruction, something that seemed to me like the
root of a tree, or----At that I stopped dead. Could it be possible that
I had struck the foundation of the hut?

The morning we entered the valley Moira had tripped over one of the
loose logs that had once been part of the building, and at the time I
had attached peculiar significance to the discovery; but now it appeared
that I had actually gone one better. Without more ado I made the dirt
fly, and in less time than it takes to tell I had shot away the covering
earth and brought to light the object that had at first drawn my
attention. I saw then, with a gasp of relief, that it was indeed the
eastern foundation of the hut that I had unearthed. Whoever had built
the place had built well, for the thick cross-piece still remaine