and understand.

"We're not the first here," Cumshaw said suddenly.

Bradby turned on him in alarm. "What d'y' mean?" he asked indistinctly.

"Some of the trees are blazed," Cumshaw pointed out. "The cuts are
clean, and that means they've been done with an axe. But they're all
weather-worn, so it must have been some time ago."

"I don't like the look of it all the same," Bradby said despondently.
"It means that someone else has stumbled on this place--it doesn't
matter much whether it was yesterday or ten years ago--and what has been
done before will almost certainly be done again. If those troopers come
this way----"

"What's the good of crossing the bridge before you come to it?" Cumshaw
interrupted. "We've been lucky so far, and who's to say our luck won't
hold out till the end?"

"It's the end I'm looking at," Bradby said gloomily. "It might be the
sort of end neither of us'd fancy."

Mr. Cumshaw made no immediate reply. He was peering very intently
through the boles of the trees as if he was not quite sure that what he
saw was really there.

"What are you looking at?" Bradby demanded irritably.

"If that's not a bit of a clearing and a hut on the edge of it, I'm a
lunatic," Abel Cumshaw said.

"Hell!" ejaculated Bradby, and he in his turn peered through the trees.

"There's no smoke coming from it," Cumshaw said comfortingly. "It looks
deserted. I daresay it's been like that for years."

"I don't like this place," Bradby remarked with naive irrelevance. "It
fair gives me the creeps. There's spooks about here."

"If you talk that way," said Cumshaw fiercely, "I'll put a bullet
through you. That sort of talk's only fit for children. You're not a
child. You ought to have more sense. There's things here doubtless that
you and I don't understand, but they're quite capable of a rational
explanation, so don't go digging up any stuff about ghosts until you
find you can't explain them any other way. There's the hut in front of
us, and either there's someone in it or there isn't. If there is, we've
got to use our wits; if there isn't, the game's ours."

"Have it your own way," said Bradby. "I'm game enough when I know what
I'm tackling. I only mentioned I didn't like the feel of the place, and
I don't see that that gives you any call to say what you have."

"We'll call it off until we've investigated," Cumshaw replied. "You stay
here with the horses, and I'll creep forward a bit and see if anyone's
home. A