Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/121

Rh sign of any habitation of the little cabin more recent than that of two years before. Externally it showed to Koehler and to Brunton no difference or disturbance; but now, as they looked up on the hill behind the cabin, there was something new, something that of itself spoke as clearly to the strangers to the little cabin as to the men who had sought it before in refuge and left it again in their retreat to the south.

A rude, wooden cross—a single, lonely cross marking a grave—stood on the slope behind the cabin looking out over it to the sea. Koehler and Brunton had no need to tell each other that it had been raised there since they had left. As far as one might see the lonely cross its message was plain. Two men—Ian Thomas and Eric Hedon—had reached that cabin. One had died there; the other had raised the cross over him.

Which man lay under the cross? And when the other had buried him and raised the little battered cross above the grave, how long had he survived? The hut ahead surely would tell that at least. Geoff again ran ahead of the