with
some one above? I see others similar to these in the open place over
there beyond the kitchen door."

"It is a trail. Let us follow it. It seems to lead anywhere but towards
the waterfall. This is an important discovery, Mr. Ransom, and may lead
to conclusions such as we might not otherwise have presumed to entertain,
especially if we come upon an impression clear enough to point in which
direction the person making it was going."

"Here is what you want," Ransom assured him in a low and curiously
smothered voice. He was evidently greatly excited by this result of their
inquiries, for all his apparent quiet and precise movements. "It's a
woman's step, and that woman was going from the ell when she left these
tokens of her passage behind her. Going! and as you say not in the
direction of the waterfall."

"Hush! I see some one at the kitchen window. Let us move warily and be
sure not to confound these prints with those of any other person. It
looks as if a great many people had passed here."

"Yes, this is the way to the chicken-coops and out-houses. But in the
ground beyond I think I see a single line of steps again,--small steps
like these. Where can they be leading? They are deep like those of a
person running."

"And straggling, like those of a person running in the dark. See how they
waver from the direct line down there, turn, and almost come up against
that wood-pile! Whose steps are these? Whose, Mr. Harper? Quick! I must
see where they go. Our time will not be lost. The key to the labyrinth is
in our hands."

The lawyer was in the rear and the eyes of the other were fixed far
ahead. For this reason, perhaps, the former allowed himself a quiet shake
of the head, which might not have encouraged the other so very much, had
he caught sight of it. They were now on the verge of the garden, or what
would soon be a garden if these rains betokened spring. A path ran along
its edge and in this path the footsteps they were following lost
themselves; but they came upon them again among the hillocks of some old
potato-hills beyond, and finally traced them quite across the garden
waste to a fence, along which they ran, blundering from ploughed earth to
spots of smoother ground, and so back again till they came upon an old
turn-stile!

Passing through this, the two men stopped and looked about them. They
were in a road ridged with grass and flanked by bushes. One end ran east
into a wooded valley, the other debou