dinary, and the silence was unbroken
save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.

The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.

"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.

We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
being disturbed.

Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
the utterance of a single word.

To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
summit.

Then together we peered over, just, however, in 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 neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."

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

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

"No,