everything and likely to be at the bottom of all good and evil. I was thinking, Miss Carew, how strange it is to find the great leaders of my own people taking me back to Azen's manedos. Do we keep on straight ahead?"
The source of the hidden road had been doubtful at the edge of a clearing where new trees had failed to grow; and Ethel went ahead slightly to guide the way. The Rock now was constantly in sight; and, glancing again and again at it, Ethel felt it dominating her mood.
Not the Rock alone, of course; what Loutrelle had told her affected her as did the discovery of the marks of the stranger in the roofless shack; and the way her grandfather had spoken to her and talked to himself,—many affairs that morning which had begun so early. She was a little tired and was looking down at the snow only a few yards ahead of her as she went on.
A row of dark dots spotted the snow from right to left,—dots which seemed to redden as she approached them and to grow larger. They appeared about two feet or a yard apart, rather irregularly, but in almost a straight line; and as she reached them, she saw they were drops, drops of blood.
She started and looked about. Except Loutrelle beside her, no man and no animal was anywhere in sight; there were no tracks or scratches on the snow, no marks of any sort but the drops of blood reaching from right to left across the way that Loutrelle and she had been going.
"What is it?" she cried to him, suddenly shaken.
He stooped and scooped up snow containing a drop of the red stain.
