“All right,” said Peggy. “We’ll come.”
They all went into the old temple, and switched on the torches they had brought. Once again they gazed on Beowald’s “stone men,” and smiled to think of his idea that the statues had once been wicked men, turned into stone.
The biggest statue of all, at the back of the cave, sat on his wide flat rock, gazing with blank eyes out of the entrance. He seemed to be in much better repair than the others, who had lost noses, hands and even heads in some cases. Jack flashed his torch around, and suddenly came to a stop as he wandered around.
“Look here!” he said.
The others came to him and looked down at the ground, where his torch made a round ring of bright light. In the light was the print of a small bare foot. Jack swung his torch here and there, and on the floor of the temple other footprints could be seen — all small and bare, the toes showing clearly.
“Someone comes here quite a lot!” said Jack.
“More than one person,” said Mike, kneeling down and looking closely at a few prints with his torch. “These are not the prints of the same person’s feet. Look at this print here — all the toes are straight — but this one has a crooked big toe-print. And that one is a little larger than the others.”
“It couldn’t be Beowald’s prints, could it?” asked Nora, remembering the bare feet of the goatherd.
“No. His feet are much bigger than those shown in these prints,” said Mike. “I remember thinking what big feet he had.”
“Well — could it be the robbers’ footprints?” cried Peggy, suddenly.