Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/205

Rh "No," said Koehler, screwing down the glasses and swiftly leading the way toward the object.

A heap of stones it certainly was, and an artificial heap; but also it was not a cairn. The snow had drifted up about it so as to cover two sides; then, coming close and allowing for the shape of the pile under the snow, Geoff saw what the object was.

"A stone house!" he cried in astonishment to Koehler.

The doctor nodded and went up to examine it. A stone house indeed it was, standing all by itself on that grim, rocky point. It was about ten feet square, with a dome-shaped top and a door that was drifted full of snow. Plainly it was old, very old, and had not been occupied—or at least it had not been restored or rebuilt—for many decades; or, since time works changes slowly in the Arctic, that stone house might have stood in that condition for a century as well as for a decade. If it had been there a century, so also might it have looked over that Arctic ice a thousand years ago. There was absolutely nothing to denote its age