"What? Show me where!" Rose Emer knelt beside him to stare at the medley of footprints. She looked up at him wide-eyed a moment later.
"Why, this is impossible!" she gasped. "And yet—what can it mean? Those are the hoofprints of unshod horses!"
Polaris smiled down at her. "Remember the showers of ashes, Rose Emer; and that I told you that we were to learn some great new thing if we won safe to shore," he said. "Now are we at its gates. Stay—something glimmers yonder in the trail!"
He strode away, and returned shortly, bearing something that he had plucked from the snow.
"Bore any man in your company aught like this?" he asked, and held out to her a long, slender-bladed knife.
Wider grew the eyes of the girl in wonder as she took the weapon from him and looked at it. It was of one piece, both blade and shaft, nicely balanced and exquisitely wrought; but it was of no metal which the girl had ever seen. Only in the finest of iridescent glass had she ever seen the bewildering play of colors that was reflected from its bright blade when the sunlight fell on it. It was nearly a foot long, needle-pointed and razor-keen.
From the glittering dagger to the man's face the girl looked slowly. "There is no metal known in the world to-day like that from which this knife is made," said she. "Who and what are they who dropped it here? And here, there are letters on the blade. They look like Greek."
She pointed to a beautifully clear inscription running down the blade. It read as follows:
ΟΧΑΛΚΕΥΣΚΑΡΔΕΠΟΙΗΜΕ
Polaris took the knife quickly and read where the girl pointed.