So time slipped away for an hour or so, as she sat there in the summer stillness, lulled by the hum of bees and the song of birds, and the low breeze sighing in the pine trees, and then she started up at the sound of excited voices coming around the house.
The four cave-hunters were returning helter-skelter, their faces pale, their eyes like saucers, all shouting at once:
“Oh, Mis’ Gray, we have found a dead man!”
“A dead man!”
“A dead man!”
“If you don’t believe us, come on, and we will show you!”
It was no boyish joke, she could see from their pale, earnest little faces, so she said:
“Oh, my, how dreadful! Some Indian bones, perhaps, my dears?”
The boys, who had got in a close group together, now began to talk in loud whispers, one saying. “Oh, tell her!” another, “Oh, don’t,” while the something unexplainable in their faces made her tremble with a strange dread.
She said as calmly as she could for the wild beating of her heart: