Chapter Thirteen.
Making the best of it.
“You’re quite right, my son,” said the Cornishman coolly, after lighting his pipe and carefully examining the ground. “I’m not much of a hand at this kind of thing, but it looks plain enough. Here’s all our footmarks quite fresh, and here’s a lot more that look as if they were made last night.”
“Last night?” cried Dallas.
“Ay, that they do.”
“But those may be ours.”
“Nay; not one of us has got a hoof like that,” cried the Cornishman, pointing with the stem of his pipe. “I’ve got a tidy one of my own, but I aren’t pigeon-toed. Look at that one, too, and that. Yonder’s our marks, and, hullo! what’s that lying in the water?”
The others gazed in the indicated direction, and Dallas leaped into the shallow water, to stoop down and pick out a knife.
“Some one must have dropped this,” he cried.
“Unless one of us has lost his,” said the big fellow. “Any one own it?”