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246 "That's the next part of the puzzle—let's move on."

She was glad to do that, and they left Coral Cove, Spanish Dick giving a wide curve to the ghastly relics, quite as little yellow Alfonso who trotted behind him would have shunned a feline stranger. They clambered up the limestone cliffs and found the old trail, leading back through a clump of feathery bamboos and thickets of tall grasses, to another grove of royal palms on the first green terrace of the ascent.

"Have a drink, Sally."

She bent over and looked down through the pellucid depths of the spring, her lips starting the silver circles in its surface. She lifted her head and looked at the laughing face trembling in the mirror. At the bottom, far below the wavering features, little bubbles welled like tiny ascending spirits.

"How pretty!" she exclaimed—and then started back with a shudder as she made out—other things besides those silver bubbles in the gravel at the bottom,—a human breast bone with its ribs still intact, and worn even whiter by the action of the waters than its fellows on the sands a mile away.

"You did jump, Sally," said Ben, "but never mind, I did, too, when I first saw it."

She looked down into the clear depths again, then drew back and almost shrieked:

"Look at that!"

"What?"

"That"— A white finger pointed downward.

Straight through the breast-bone, and standing still up right after who knows how many generations, stood the haft