Suddenly Copley seized her wrist. His touch was cold and betrayed the fact that he was nervous himself.
“Listen!” he whispered, his lips close to Ruth’s ear.
Helen would have immediately been “in a fidget,” and said so. But Ruth could restrain herself pretty well. She nodded so that Copley saw she heard him and was listening. They waited several moments.
“There!” breathed the young fellow again.
“What is it?” Ruth ventured.
“Somebody talking. Listen!”
There was a human voice near by. It sounded close to them, and yet its direction Ruth could not decide upon. There was a hollow, reverberating quality to the sounds that baffled determination as to their origin. But it was a human voice without doubt.
Ruth could not, however, understand a word that was spoken. The tones were first high, then low, never guttural, and possessed a certain sibilant quality. Whether the words spoken were English or not, was likewise a mystery.
Ruth and Chessleigh stood first in one place, then in another, in that circle about the big beech tree. The young man had gone all around the tattered trunk and found no opening. If it was hollow, there was no way of getting into it near the ground, nor was there any ladder by which one might scale the huge trunk to the top.
“That’s no hide-away,” mouthed Chess, his lips close at Ruth’s ear again. “And it seems to me the sound doesn’t come from overhead.”