tterly consumed forest! More
than that, from the indications before him, the catastrophe must have
almost immediately followed his retreat from the hollow on the
preceding night. It was evident that the fire had leaped the
intervening shoulder of the spur in one of the unaccountable, but by no
means rare, phenomena of this kind of disaster. The circling heights
around were yet untouched; only the hollow, and the ledge of rock
against which they had blundered with their horses when they were
seeking the mysterious window in last evening's darkness, were calcined
and destroyed. He dismounted and climbed the ledge, still warm from
the spent fire. A large mass of grayish outcrop had evidently been the
focus of the furnace blast of heat which must have raged for hours in
this spot. He was skirting its crumbling debris when he started
suddenly at a discovery which made everything else fade into utter
insignificance. Before him, in a slight depression formed by a fault
or lapse in the upheaved strata, lay the charred and incinerated
remains of a dwelling-house leveled to the earth! Originally half
hidden by a natural abattis of growing myrtle and ceanothus which
covered this counter-scarp of rock towards the trail, it must have
stood within a hundred feet of them during their halt!

Even in its utter and complete obliteration by the furious furnace
blast that had swept across it, there was still to be seen an
unmistakable ground plan and outline of a four-roomed house. While
everything that was combustible had succumbed to that intense heat,
there was still enough half-fused and warped metal, fractured iron
plate, and twisted and broken bars to indicate the kitchen and tool
shed. Very little had, evidently, been taken away; the house and its
contents were consumed where they stood. With a feeling of horror and
desperation Key at last ventured to disturb two or three of the
blackened heaps that lay before him. But they were only vestiges of
clothing, bedding, and crockery--there was no human trace that he could
detect. Nor was there any suggestion of the original condition and
quality of the house, except its size: whether the ordinary unsightly
cabin of frontier "partners," or some sylvan cottage--there was nothing
left but the usual ignoble and unsavory ruins of burnt-out human
habitation.

And yet its very existence was a mystery. It had been unknown at
Collinson's, its nearest neighbor, and it was presumable