l lieutenant.

"Yep," replied Burton. "I wouldn't have lost it for anything."

Bridge and his companions had made their way along the wooded path for
perhaps a quarter of a mile when the man halted and drew back behind the
foliage of a flowering bush. With raised finger he motioned the others
to silence and then pointed through the branches ahead. The boy and
the girl, tense with excitement, peered past the man into a clearing in
which stood a log shack, mud plastered; but it was not the hovel which
held their mute attention--it was rather the figure of a girl, bare
headed and bare footed, who toiled stubbornly with an old spade at a
long, narrow excavation.

All too suggestive in itself was the shape of the hole the girl was
digging; there was no need of the silent proof of its purpose which lay
beside her to tell the watchers that she worked alone in the midst of
the forest solitude upon a human grave. The thing wrapped in an old
quilt lay silently waiting for the making of its last bed.

And as the three watched her other eyes watched them and the digging
girl--wide, awestruck eyes, filled with a great terror, yet now and
again half closing in the shrewd expression of cunning that is a hall
mark of crafty ignorance.

And as they watched, their over-wrought nerves suddenly shuddered to the
grewsome clanking of a chain from the dark interior of the hovel.

The youth, holding tight to Bridge's sleeve, strove to pull him away.

"Let's go back," he whispered in a voice that trembled so that he could
scarce control it.

"Yes, please," urged the girl. "Here is another path leading toward the
north. We must be close to a road. Let's get away from here."

The digger paused and raised her head, listening, as though she had
caught the faint, whispered note of human voices. She was a black haired
girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in a motley of flowered calico and
silk, with strings of gold and silver coins looped around her olive
neck. Her bare arms were encircled by bracelets--some cheap and gaudy,
others well wrought from gold and silver. From her ears depended
ornaments fashioned from gold coins. Her whole appearance was barbaric,
her occupation cast a sinister haze about her; and yet her eyes seemed
fashioned for laughter and her lips for kissing.

The watchers remained motionless as the girl peered first in one
direction and then in another, seeking an explanation of the sounds
which had disturbed her. Her bro