board!"

He had hauled it out from under the trunk, and the others, approaching,
looked at it with interest. In all that wild desolation there was
something very human about a fragment of board. Somehow it connected
that unknown wilderness with the world of men.

"That didn't come up here by itself," said Tom.

"You're right, it didn't," said Tyson.

"Here's a rusty nail in it," Roy added.

The board, unpainted and weather beaten as it was, seemed singularly out
of place in that remote forest.

Suddenly Roy grasped Tom's arm; his hand trembled; his whole form was
agitated.

"_Look!_" he whispered hoarsely. "Look--down there--right _there_. See?
Do you see it? Right under.... Oh, boy, it's _awful_...."

CHAPTER XV

A SCOUT IS THOROUGH

Scout though he was, Roy's hand trembled as he passed his flashlight to
Tom. He could not, for his life, point that flashlight himself at the
grewsome object which he had seen in the darkness.

Lying crossways underneath the trunk was the body of a man, his face
looking straight up into the sky with a fixed stare, and a soulless grin
upon his ashen face. Somewhere nearby, mud was dripping from an exposed
root, and the earth laden drops as they fell one by one into the ragged
cavity gave a sound which simulated a kind of unfeeling laughter. It
seemed as if that stark, staring thing might be chuckling through its
rigid, grinning mouth. Roy's weight and movement on the trunk
communicated a slight stir to the ghastly figure and its head moved ever
so little....

"No," said Tom, anticipating Winton's question; "he's dead. Get off the
log, Roy."

"Well, I wish that dripping would stop, anyway," said Winton.

Tom approached the figure, the others following and standing about in
silence as he examined it. They all avoided the log, the slightest
movement of which had an effect which made them shudder.

Raising one cold, muddy hand, Tom felt the wrist, laying it gently down
again. There was not even a faint, departing vestige of life in the
trapped, crushed body.

"Is it him?" Gilbert Tyson asked in a subdued tone.

"Guess so," said Tom, kneeling.

The others stood back in a kind of fearful respect, watching,
waiting.... Now and then a leaf or twig fell. And once, some broken tree
limb crackled as it adjusted itself in its fallen estate. And all the
while the mud kept dripping, dripping, dripping....

Lying on the dead man's open coat, as if they had fallen from his