“Don’t you think a boot made that?”
“It looks uncommonly like it,” Dr. Lane answered. “There may be someone camped near here: a prospector, or a fishing enthusiast. It would be luck if we could find someone who could tell us if we were going out of our way.”
“It might be a track left by the man you were talking to,” Barry suggested.
“Oh, he was here last summer; no track of his would be visible by this time. That mark looked fairly new. Hullo—!” He broke off suddenly.
The path had swung sharply round a dense patch of dogwood, and they saw before them, in a little open space, a rough bark hut. It stood among a clump of wattles, the trunks of which had been used, so far as was possible, as supports. No more crazy-looking building had ever formed a home: it seemed to lean this way and that, and where the heavy slabs of iron-bark had warped under the weather it was patched with whatever material the bush afforded, and daubed with creek mud. Dr. Lane gave a low whistle.
“We seem to have found our prospector,” he said. “I hope the good man is at home.”
“Man!” said Robin, staring. “It isn’t only a man. Look there!”
She pointed to where a rude clothes-line, made of twisted stringy-bark, hung between two trees. Something fluttered from it: a woman’s dress of faded blue, patched and torn. And as they looked, a woman suddenly came round the corner of the hut, and, seeing them, cried out and ran forward.
She was a very young woman, but her face was lined and worn in a way that was not good to see. Her faded hair was strained back from a face so thin that it looked almost like a mummy’s; her eyes held a world of horror in their sunken depths. Robin gave a gasp of pity and went quickly to meet her, and the poor soul put out a trembling hand, touching her sleeve with a kind of incredulous delight.
“A girl!” she muttered. “I thought I’d never see a woman again!”