el Gaylord warn't the man to drown in three foot o' water
without making a struggle. This ain't no accident. It's murder! We must
go back an' get the coroner. It's agen the law to touch the body until
he comes."

It went to my heart to leave the old man lying there at the bottom of
that pool, but I could not prevail on one of them to help me move him.
The coroner must be brought, they stubbornly insisted, and they
restrained me forcibly when I would have waded into the water. We turned
back with shaking knees and hurried toward the mouth of the cave,
slipping and sliding in the wet clay as we ran. I, for one, felt as
though a dozen assassins were following our footsteps in the dark. And
all the time I had a sickening feeling that my uncle's death only
foreshadowed a more terrible tragedy. The guide's: "This ain't no
accident; it's murder," kept running in my head, and much as I tried to
drive the thought from me, a horrible suspicion came creeping to my mind
that I knew who the murderer must be.

CHAPTER XI

THE SHERIFF VISITS FOUR-POOLS

We found the coroner and told our story. He sent word to Kennisburg, the
county-seat, for the sheriff to come; and then having called a doctor
and three or four other witnesses, we set out again for the cave. The
news of the tragedy had spread like wild-fire, and half the town of
Luray would have accompanied us had the coroner not forcibly prevented
it. He stationed two men at the entrance of the cave to keep the crowd
from pushing in. I myself should have been more than willing to wait
outside, but I felt that it was my duty by Radnor to be present. If any
discoveries were made I wished to be the first to know it.

It was sad business and I will not dwell upon it. One side of the old
man's head had been fractured by a heavy blow. He had been dead several
hours when we found him, but the doctor could not be certain whether
drowning, or the injury he had sustained, had been the immediate cause
of death. Dangling from a jagged piece of rock half way down the cliff,
we found Polly Mathers's coat, torn and drabbled with mud. The clay path
above the pool was trampled in every direction 'way out to the brink of
the precipice; it was evident, even to the most untrained observer, that
a fierce struggle of some sort had taken place. I was the first one to
examine the marks, and as I knelt down and held the light to the ground,
I saw with a thrill of mingled horror and hope that one