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e to expose him to the men he had watched. But Frank did not wish to turn back. There was something fascinating as well as repellent about the woods. Down there was a grave. At the head of the grave was a stone. On that stone was chiseled: "Sacred to the Memory of Rawson Denning." Denning, like Frank Merriwell, had been inquisitive. He had attempted to solve the mystery of the island, and he had disappeared. Afterward the grave had been found on the island. No one had dared open that grave to see if the body of the missing man from Boston lay within. Frank felt a desire to look at that grave again. He went down toward it, entering the thick woods. Every step that he advanced seemed to cause the feeling to grow stronger upon him. The woods were silent and deserted. It did not seem possible that there could be a thing of life other than Frank anywhere within them. All at once, with astonishing suddenness, he came out into the opening and there before him was the grave, the headstone gleaming gray in the dim light. Frank paused. Involuntarily he listened. He had not forgotten how, on his other visit to the spot, both he and Browning had seemed to hear a mysterious whisper in the air, had seemed to hear a rustle down in that grave, as if the murdered man turned restlessly. Without knowing why he did so, Frank listened again. "Look!" He started, for it seemed that he had heard that whisper. He glanced all around. Silence in the woods. Not even the rustle of a leaf. How lonely it was! "Look!" Again that word, coming from he knew not where. At what should he look? What did it mean? Then he told himself that it was all his imagination--he had heard no whispered word. He advanced toward the grave; he stood beside it. "Look!" Was it imagination? This time the whisper sounded amazingly clear and distinct. "Look at what?" In spite of himself, he spoke the words aloud. He did not expect an answer, and he gasped for breath when it came: "The stone!" A quiver ran over Frank Merriwell's body. Of all the mysteries on this island, the mystery of this black whispering glade in the woods was the greatest. He bent forward and looked at the stone. There were fresh chips on the mound, and at a glance he saw that the name "Rawson Denning" had been chiseled out. Below it another name had been cut into the stone, so that the inscription now read: "Sacred to the Memory of Frank Merriwell."
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