"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."
"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had something over his shoulder?"
"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."
"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short—and seemed more like a spade."
"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain of that?"
"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them. We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was broad and square—the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been recently disturbed.
"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down there! They've just been burying something!"
Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
"I really believe they have concealed something!"
Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed, we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn over the place which, if approached from any other point than the high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the ground had ever been interfered with.
Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size. But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our progress was very slow and difficult.
At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel, standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground, suddenly cried:
"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why—whatever is that?"
I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected that I was held dumb and motionless.
By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased rather than diminished.
I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked blankly into my companion's face.
The amazing enigma was surely complete!
CHAPTER VII
CONTAINS A SURPRISE
The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface, was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed, proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men had dug.
Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person she had expected to find.
"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently, by her dress and hands."
"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife; of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired, black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
"Those men—those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret and concealed the evidence of this second crime."
"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."
Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had disappeared in the darkness of the wood.
I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident, familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.
We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened. But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.
We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had so secretly concealed the body of their victim.
"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be arrested."
"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for they must not see me in this terrible plight."
