Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/137

Rh time to see two dark figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the glen.

"Who are they, I wonder," I asked. "Do you recognize them?"

"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in the neighbourhood. They've lost their way most probably."

"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of the men had something over his shoulder?"

"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."

"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short — and seemed more like a spade."

"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain of that?"

"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them. We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."

"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was broad and square — the back of some one who is familiar to me, only for the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.

I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been recently disturbed.