“Easily,” said Tregarvon, and he swung out and dropped over the low cliff to lead the way along the broken ledges.
It was while Carfax was lowering himself with more care than Tregarvon had taken, with the leaning tree to help, that he made a small discovery and called Tregarvon back. On its outer or valley-facing side the leaning tree carried a “blazed” scar with markings similar to those on the white-oak half-way between the cliff and the glade. Like the other scar, this one was old, and the bark had long since healed around the edges of the ax-wound. But the markings, which were cut into the heart-wood, were still quite distinct.
“Well?” said Tregarvon, after they had examined the scar together, “what do you make of it?”
Carfax was pencilling the mark on the back of the letter upon which he had sketched the damp-sand hoof-prints.
“I don’t know. It looks something like the Greek letter ‘pi’, a capital ‘T’ with two stems, don’t you think? But, of course, that is only a coincidence.”
“Is it, though?” queried Tregarvon thoughtfully.
“It must be. What woodsman in this part of the world would ever mark a tree with a Greek letter?”
“No woodsman, perhaps; but a schoolmaster might. Poictiers, I am slowly coming around to your point of view. Hartridge is at the bottom of all these smash-ups and mysteries. I hate to believe it of him, but everything leans in his direction.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it? But the admission of the fact doesn’t clear up the mysteries. Say that, for some reason, sentimental or other, Hartridge wishes to drive you out—make you quit. That might explain the smash-ups and the hindrances; but it doesn’t begin to explain why we should find these marks of his—if they are his—made on these two trees years and years ago; or why he should send a pair of surveyors up here to make monkey motions in the moonlight.”
Tregarvon was leading the way along the ledge toward the tramhead.