第7章

Even in its utter and complete obliteration by the furious furnace blast that had swept across it,there was still to be seen an unmistakable ground plan and outline of a four-roomed house.While everything that was combustible had succumbed to that intense heat,there was still enough half-fused and warped metal,fractured iron plate,and twisted and broken bars to indicate the kitchen and tool shed.Very little had,evidently,been taken away;the house and its contents were consumed where they stood.With a feeling of horror and desperation Key at last ventured to disturb two or three of the blackened heaps that lay before him.But they were only vestiges of clothing,bedding,and crockery--there was no human trace that he could detect.Nor was there any suggestion of the original condition and quality of the house,except its size:

whether the ordinary unsightly cabin of frontier "partners,"or some sylvan cottage--there was nothing left but the usual ignoble and unsavory ruins of burnt-out human habitation.

And yet its very existence was a mystery.It had been unknown at Collinson's,its nearest neighbor,and it was presumable that it was equally unknown at Skinner's.Neither he nor his companions had detected it in their first journey by day through the hollow,and only the tell-tale window at night had been a hint of what was even then so successfully concealed that they could not discover it when they had blundered against its rock foundation.For concealed it certainly was,and intentionally so.But for what purpose?

He gave his romance full play for a few minutes with this question.

Some recluse,preferring the absolute simplicity of nature,or perhaps wearied with the artificialities of society,had secluded himself here with the company of his only daughter.Proficient as a pathfinder,he had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's,which would have betrayed his vicinity.But recluses are not usually accompanied by young daughters,whose relations with the world,not being as antagonistic,would make them uncertain companions.Why not a wife?His presumption of the extreme youth of the face he had seen at the window was after all only based upon the slipper he had found.And if a wife,whose absolute acceptance of such confined seclusion might be equally uncertain,why not somebody else's wife?

Here was a reason for concealment,and the end of an episode,not unknown even in the wilderness.And here was the work of the Nemesis who had overtaken them in their guilty contentment!The story,even to its moral,was complete.And yet it did not entirely satisfy him,so superior is the absolutely unknown to the most elaborate theory.

His attention had been once or twice drawn towards the crumbling wall of outcrop,which during the conflagration must have felt the full force of the fiery blast that had swept through the hollow and spent its fury upon it.It bore evidence of the intense heat in cracked fissures and the crumbling debris that lay at its feet.

Key picked up some of the still warm fragments,and was not surprised that they easily broke in a gritty,grayish powder in his hands.In spite of his preoccupation with the human interest,the instinct of the prospector was still strong upon him,and he almost mechanically put some of the pieces in his pockets.Then after another careful survey of the locality for any further record of its vanished tenants,he returned to his horse.Here he took from his saddle-bags,half listlessly,a precious phial encased in wood,and,opening it,poured into another thick glass vessel part of a smoking fluid;he then crumbled some of the calcined fragments into the glass,and watched the ebullition that followed with mechanical gravity.When it had almost ceased he drained off the contents into another glass,which he set down,and then proceeded to pour some water from his drinking-flask into the ordinary tin cup which formed part of his culinary traveling-kit.Into this he put three or four pinches of salt from his provision store.Then dipping his fingers into the salt and water,he allowed a drop to fall into the glass.A white cloud instantly gathered in the colorless fluid,and then fell in a fine film to the bottom of the glass.Key's eyes concentrated suddenly,the listless look left his face.His fingers trembled lightly as he again let the salt water fall into the solution,with exactly the same result!Again and again he repeated it,until the bottom of the glass was quite gray with the fallen precipitate.And his own face grew as gray.

His hand trembled no longer as he carefully poured off the solution so as not to disturb the precipitate at the bottom.Then he drew out his knife,scooped a little of the gray sediment upon its point,and emptying his tin cup,turned it upside down upon his knee,placed the sediment upon it,and began to spread it over the dull surface of its bottom with his knife.He had intended to rub it briskly with his knife blade.But in the very action of spreading it,the first stroke of his knife left upon the sediment and the cup the luminous streak of burnished silver!