Duplin gazed keenly around. Then he gave a low, husky cry. He recognized the spot where they were. In their wanderings they had passed entirely through the great hill!
"Yonder is the creek—now for water!" he cried, and then sprung forward like a startled deer.
Flat upon their stomachs they lay, and quaffed the cool, sparkling water with ecstatic delight. It was almost worth enduring such a trial for the pleasure imbibed with that draught.
"Ha!" suddenly exclaimed Wythe, as he started up. "Look at this, Duplin," and he pointed to a damp, blood-stained rag that lay half upon a rock, half in the water.
The same thought struck them both. They had passed through the labyrinth—might not Jack and his captor or captors have done the same?
"It's so," muttered Duplin, pointing to a broad track close beside their own. "There is the same track that Jack measured. Hurrah! we may find him yet!"
"True—but how? Alive, or—dead?"
In silence the two friends scrutinized the sandy ground around. Finally they were rewarded by finding where the trail led away from the further side of the creek.
In silence they glanced at each other, as they noted the point toward which the trail now tended. It seemingly led direct to the valley whence they had made that strange discovery—to the cliff in which lived the strange couple.
Then the truth struck them, and they wondered that they had not thought of this solution before. The madman was their strangely-acting adversary. And in this fact they saw a solution of his wild antics with the glowing skeletons. Surely no sane man would have acted as he had done—have braved such danger.