rent from the crumbly earth masses he had been handling. This piece
was partly hardened and reddened. At once Charley saw it was clay.

Charley continued to scrape aside the ashes. He found more and more little
chunks of clay, while the hollow place in the centre of the mound proved
to be a square, small depression that must have been made with human
hands. Even before he had it cleared of ashes, Charley knew that. The
depression was much too rectangular to be natural. It was about eighteen
inches square and almost a foot deep. In the bottom of it were charred
ends of sticks and a little candle grease, buried under the mass of ashes.

When Charley had carefully scraped and blown out all the ashes possible,
he lay flat on his belly and examined the place minutely. Some person or
persons had dug a little square chamber, like a sunken box, right in the
shoulder of the mound. Charley decided that a candle had been placed in
the centre of the box-like excavation, leaves packed loosely about the
base of the candle, some fine, dry twigs stacked across the edges of the
excavation, and across the top of the hole other dry twigs had been
placed. Then the candle had been lighted, the open side of the excavation
closed with twigs thrust vertically into the clay, and leaves heaped over
and about the excavation.

As Charley examined the mound, he could not but admire the devilish
cunning exhibited in the construction of this fire box. The open space
about the mound would give full sweep to the morning breeze, and the box
was located in the windward shoulder of the little mound, exactly where
the breeze would hit it hardest. The piles of leaves heaped about the box
would spread the flames on all sides.

The candle grease in the bottom of the excavation, Charley had no doubt,
was the remains of one of his own candles, taken with the food supplies
from his cupboard. Nor did he doubt that the man who had taken it was
Lumley. He must have disappeared in the forest the moment Henry Collins
had told him what was afoot, for there could be no doubt Collins had
informed him. After the moon rose, so that he could see well, Lumley must
have come to the cabin, stolen food and candles, cautiously removed the
aerial and grounded the battery, and gone straight down the valley to set
his fires. If he could not get the money for the timber, or at least some
of it, quite evidently Lumley did not intend to allow any one else to have
it, not even the s