Page:Curwood--The Courage of Captain Plum.djvu/215

 "Marion!" he called softly, and listened intently.

He went on when there was no reply, and pushed open the door.

A candle was burning on a stand in front of a mirror. The room was as empty as the others. But there was no disorder here. The bed was unused, the garments in the open closet had not been disarranged. On the floor beside the bed was a pair of shoes and as Nathaniel saw them his heart seemed to leap to his throat and stifled the cry that was on his lips. He took one of them in his hand, his whole being throbbing with excitement. It was Marion's shoe—encrusted with mud and torn as he had seen it in the forest. With her name falling from his lips in a pleading cry he now searched the room and on the stand in front of the mirror he found a lilac colored ribbon, soiled and crumpled. It was Marion's ribbon—the one he had seen last in her hair, and he crushed it to his lips as he ran back into the great room, calling out her