The minutes passed slowly—too slowly for the two girls, who stood by his side. Their feelings were wrought to a fever heat; their hearts beat a tattoo within their bosoms, and a fear of some dreadful revelation possessed their souls.
The shadow crept on; the sun was going down to its bed in the ocean, which spread out in every direction. On moved the shadow; it had reached a dense cluster of mountain-ivy, which completely hid the rock from view: the hour was 15:55 dial.
Seizing a large knife from his bundle of tools, the doctor sprang quickly to the spot, and with dispatch, cleared away the evergreen, exposing the solid rock of the cliffs. With his eyes upon his watch, he noted the passing moments.
“Sixteen dial!” he cried, and placed the point of his knife at the end of the shadow of the “Finger of God.”
Carefully marking the spot, he diligently searched for the letters mentioned in the communication. Not a trace of a letter was visible; the virgin rock lay bare, and undefiled by human hands. Above, below, and on either side, his search was equally unsuccessful, and as he communicated the result of his examination to Mollie and Marie, consternation seized upon them. Could it be that they had been deceived, and that the contents of the letter were false, and made for some purpose of alluring Junius Cobb to this spot? They looked at each other in bewilderment.
Suddenly the doctor exclaimed:
“Ah! It may be that!”
“What, doctor?” they both cried, excitedly.
But the doctor made no reply; he was climbing up the cliff, straight up from the knife-mark in the rock. With the celerity of a man intensely excited, he cut and slashed away the ivy, and threw it into the ravine; then, looking at his watch, he noted that twenty-five minutes had passed since the shadow of the rock had reached the point which he had marked. Noting the variation of the shadow from the vertical for these twenty-five minutes, he drew his knife slowly and carefully up the face of the cliff, from the mark which he had made to where the shadow of the “Finger of God” then rested, the knife describing the path of the shadow.
Turning to Mollie, who had been watching his movements in wonder, he said: