Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/117

Rh their pace. Two hundred yards away. Geoff broke into a run.

"An animal!" he called back, as he came close enough to see the claws of the feet and the shape of the skull.

"Animal?" It was Latham close behind him.

"A bear!"

"Yes, that's all."

The two slowed and walked, panting. A change from the tenseness of the first sight of the bones had come over both. Geoff watched Latham and drew a little from him. When Price had seen the skeleton first, had he hoped it was a man's, with one chance in two that it was Eric Hedon's?

Geoff himself once had been ready to believe that Eric was dead—that is, when at home he had been told that Hedon probably had been drowned five thousand miles away, he had chosen to accept that probability. But up here, seeing a skeleton on the shore and wishing that it was Eric's—well, that was different.

Koehler overtook them as they walked more slowly. He stooped beside the bones.