Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/212

 "Who the devil comes walking here?" he thought.

He found more footprints a little farther, on another border which the owner of the boots had crossed, and they led him away from the house, toward a series of clumps of trees where he saw them twice more. Then he lost sight of them for good.

He was standing near a large, half-ruined barn, built against a very tall bank. Its worm-eaten doors seemed merely balanced on their hinges. He went up and looked through a crack in the wood. Inside the windowless barn was in semi-darkness, for but little light came through the openings stopped up with straw, especially as the day was beginning to wane. He was able to distinguish a heap of barrels, broken wine-presses, old ploughs, and scrap-iron of all kinds.

"This is certainly not where my fair stroller turned her steps," thought Don Luis. "Let's look somewhere else."

Nevertheless, he did not move. He had noticed a noise in the barn.

He listened and heard nothing. But as he wanted to get to the bottom of things he forced out a couple of planks with his shoulder and stepped in.

The breach which he had thus contrived admitted a little light. He could see enough to make his way between two casks, over some broken window frames, to an empty space on the far side.

His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as he went on. For all that, he knocked his head against something which he had not perceived, something hanging up above, something rather hard which, when set in motion, swung to and fro with a curious grating sound.