But Marmaduke, who had hitherto held his tongue, now came to the front, saying eagerly, “Bones! Bones! Let me see!”
He rummaged among the branches, and while Will, Charles, and Stephen, crowded around him, George looked on “askance.”
“O-o-h!” gasped Marmaduke, “what a horrible discovery we have made! Bones! Bones of a mortal! Boys,” with emotion, “Some one was Foully Murdered Here.”
“O-o-h!” echoed all the boys, as in duty bound.
But Steve gave a horrible chuckle, and whispered to Charles, “It works already with him; and,” pointing his elbow at George, “he’ll come around.”
The pain in Charley’s heart was not very deep-seated, and it now made room for exultation. The searcher was left to his own musings, and the rest were absorbed in the discovery.
Marmaduke paused a moment, to realize the awfulness of the word murder; then, snatching up the branches, he nervously tossed them out of the way.
A little heap of white substances was disclosed which—to Marmaduke’s heated imagination—were all that remained of a human skeleton.
Now, the writer has so much respect for the feelings of his readers that he herewith warns them, in all honesty, that what is immediately to follow, borders upon the grisly; and that consequently it would be well for the queasy reader of fashionable fiction to skip the rest of this chapter and all of chapter the twelfth.
Marmaduke was now in his element; he felt somewhat as a philosopher does when a new theory in science bursts upon him; he was happy. All boyish bashfulness forsook him, and he began rapturously:—