ng every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
beneath a thicket and well escape observation."

And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
surmise.

All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
exclaimed:

"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"

My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
that spot.

More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
watchful.

When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.

Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.

For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
kind of sm