“I've got the proof. Will you note that, right there before your eyes?”
As he spoke, he pointed to the kindling-wood, or fuel, of which they had collected considerable, while there was plenty more visible around them. Fred was not sure that he understood him, so he still looked questioningly toward him.
“Wood doesn't grow in such places as this, no more than ye can find praties sprouting out of the side of a tea kettle; but then it might have been pitched down the hole above, or got drifted into it without anybody helping, if it wasn't for the fact that there's been a camp-fire here before.”
“How do you make that out, Mickey?”
The Irishman stooped down and picked up one of the pieces of wood, which was waiting to be thrown upon the camp fire. Holding it out, he showed that the end was charred.
“That isn't the only stick that's built after the same shtyle, showing that this isn't the first camp-fire that was got up in these parts. There's been gintlemen here before to-day, and they must have had some way of coming and going that we haven't diskivered as yet.”
There seemed nothing unlikely in this supposition of Mickey's, who picked up his rifle from where he had left it lying on the ground, and stared inquiringly around in the gloom.
“I wonder whether there be any wild animals prowling around?”
“I don't think that could be; for there couldn't many of them fall through that hole that let us in, and if they did, they would soon die.”
“That minds me that you hinted something about feeling the cravings of hunger, and I signified to you that I had something for ye about my clothes; and so I have, if it isn't lost.”