Often and often he wished that he but possessed the means–which so many claim nowadays–of communicating with the departed, for the feeling grew upon him so that he could not resist its influence.
"Batavsky!" he said one day, involuntarily, and the echo of the word from half a dozen peaks and crags so startled him that he did not try it again.
But for some reason or other, the last of the echoes was the loudest, and the name came back to him as clearly as he had spoken it, from a hill of verdureless rocks some two thousand yards distant:
"Batavsky!"
"Goodness, how distinct!" he mused. "But why more distinct from that inaccessible hill than from the others? Was it the work of–ah, pshaw! I am allowing the absurdity of spiritualism to get the better of my reason. And yet, after all, who knows? There be more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. But it was only echo."
He was seated on an opposite eminence, holding the worn old diagram in his hand, and trying to get at a certain point which would be the key to the location, but could not find it.
Finally, almost involuntarily, he started down the declivity and began slowly to make his way towards the forbidding pile of rocks which had sent back the echo so startlingly.
Why he sought the place he did not know. It was no more promising than other immediate locations, and besides, he had visited it a day or two before, although from another direction.
Slowly he approached and surveyed it, comparing it with his diagram. At length he saw a point that seemed to resemble the one he sought, and after studying it a moment, started to see if he could find the succeeding one.
Coming close to a dark opening, he was startled by fierce growls, and the next instant half a dozen fierce wolves sprang from it, and set upon him savagely.