"You will not let her die?" She trembled, her fear returning. "She is so young and beautiful—you will not let her die? I will give up Robin, but she must not die."
He spoke to her reassuringly, and they pushed on, making a wide detour which brought them to the rear of the Lodge. Through the window they saw the servants still passing to and fro into the dining-room serving a few belated guests. From it a square of light penetrated the woods behind, and on the edge of this they paused—the girl's eyes eagerly scanning the ground.
"I hid them here," she said. "I did not put them in the waste, for fear some one would see them."
Presently she knelt and brushed aside the leaves. Something like gold gleamed before her and she seized upon it. A moment later she had uncovered another similar object.
"There," she said chokingly; "there they are! Tell me—tell me quick! Are they the deadly ones?"
He gave them a quick glance in the light, then he said:
"I think not, but I cannot be sure here. Come with me to the guide's cabin. It was dark as we came up, but it was open. I will strike a light."
They hurried across to the little detached cabin and pushed in. Frank struck a match and lit a kerosene bracket lamp. Then he laid the two yellow mushrooms on the table beneath it, and from an inner pocket drew a small and rather mussed letter and opened it—his companion watching every movement with burning eager eyes.
"This is a letter from Miss Deane," he said, "written me from Lake Placid. In it she says that she made a mistake about the Orange Amanita that she called the Yellow Danger. These are her words—a rule taken from the book:
"'If the cup of the Yellow Amanita is present, the plant is harmless. If the cup is absent, it is poisonous.'"