Chapter 8

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 gruesome 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 brows were contracted into a scowl of apprehension which remained even after she returned to her labors, and that she was ill at ease was further evidenced by the frequent pauses she made to cast quick glances toward the dense tanglewood surrounding the clearing.

At last the grave was dug. The girl climbed out and stood looking down upon the quilt wrapped thing at her feet. For a moment she stood there as silent and motionless as the dead. Only the twittering of birds disturbed the quiet of the wood.