"Let us take it down and carry it back with us," said the lawyer.
"Na, na, my lad; we maun just wait till we come in force."
"Time to 'bout ship," growled the Captain.
"Hush!" whispered the minister, "I hear a voice, a woman's voice."
"Come on!" said the lawyer, jumping ashore; "will you come, Ben?"
"Don't ask me that, Doctor, I dassent," replied Toner, shivering with superstitious fear.
"Let me go with him," said the minister to the Captain; "we'll not be a minute away."
"Look sharp, then!" growled Mr. Thomas. "Are you loaded?"
The two explorers looked to their revolvers, and then climbed the bank, which was no easy task, as it was a mass of felled timber and dead brush; but the notes of a woman's voice led them on, and, at last, they found themselves on the shore of the fourth lake. They saw nothing, so they crouched down listening for the voice.
"Steve, Stevy dear, wake up and let us go away. Oh, why are you sleeping when every moment is precious? He will come, Stevy, I know he will, and kill you, dear!" The voice was very near. Simultaneously the intruders looked up the bank, and, at the foot of a standing hemlock, saw a woman, with gray hair hanging loose over her shoulders, who knelt by a recumbent figure. "Steve, dear brother," she continued, "do wake up! You used to be so good and sensible." Coristine crept nearer behind some bushes till he was within a very short distance of the pair. With a white, sad face, trembling in every limb, he came back as silently to the minister, and whispered: "It's poor Nash, and she calls him brother; Mr. Errol, he's murdered, he's dead." The warm-hearted Errol, who had come out to look after the detective's safety, at once became a hero.