the secret trail that I knew only too well.
Dorothy insisted that she must go. She would bear no denial, declaring
that it would be worse for her alone at home, than if we took her with
us.

It was incredible how the path seemed to lengthen. Graham watched the
girl's every step, helping her over the difficult places, pushing aside
the tangled branches, his eyes resting upon her as frankly, as tenderly
as a mother looks at her child. In single file we marched through the
gray morning, clearing cold after the storm, and the silence was seldom
broken, for we had little heart to talk.

At last we came to the high, lonely ridge, the dwarf forest, the huge,
couchant bulk of Spy Rock. There, on the back of it, with his right arm
hanging over the edge, was the outline of Edward Keene's form. It was as
if some monster had seized him and flung him over its shoulder to carry
away.

We called to him but there was no answer. The doctor climbed up with me,
and we hurried to the spot where he was lying. His face was turned to
the sky, his eyes blindly staring; there was no pulse, no breath; he was
already cold in death. His right hand and arm, the side of his neck
and face were horribly swollen and livid. The doctor stooped down and
examined the hand carefully. "See!" he cried, pointing to a great bruise
on his wrist, with two tiny punctures in the middle of it from which
a few drops of blood had oozed, "a rattlesnake has struck him. He must
have fairly put his hand upon it, perhaps in the dark, when he was
climbing. And, look, what is this?"

He picked up a flat silver box, that lay open on the rock. There were
two olive-green pellets of a resinous paste in it. He lifted it to his
face, and drew a long breath.

"Yes," he said, "it is Gunjab, the most powerful form of Hashish, the
narcotic hemp of India. Poor fellow, it saved him from frightful agony.
He died in a dream."

"You are right," I said, "in a dream, and for a dream."

We covered his face and climbed down the rock. Dorothy and Graham were
waiting below. He had put his coat around her. She was shivering a
little. There were tear-marks on her face.

"Well," I said, "you must know it. We have lost him."

"Ah!" said the girl, "I lost him long ago."

WOOD-MAGIC

There are three vines that belong to the ancient forest. Elsewhere they
will not grow, though the soil prepared for them be never so rich, the
shade of the arbour built for them never so closely and c