“Then, good-by; you may never see me again,” said Silver Voice, and turning, she vanished in the forest like a shadow.
“Strange, mysterious woman,” muttered Silvia; “she seems like the vision of a dream to me. But the paper.”
She opened it. One side was blank, the other covered with the delicate handwriting of a female.
Silvia’s face turned ghastly pale as she glanced at the first words, and by the time she had finished the first line, her whole frame was trembling violently. But she read on, read on to the end, and then she uttered a low, convulsive cry, and wrung her hands as though a terrible agony was breaking her heart.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “Is it possible?”
With her feelings wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, she descended the cliff to the water’s edge, and stepped into the canoe to return to the cavern.
As she did so, she did not notice that round, dark ball from which shone a pair of burning orbs, resting on the water, yet concealed under the projecting rim of the canoe; nor did she observe how the craft dragged as it entered beneath the waters when they were parted, with a deadly enemy clinging to its side.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEANING OF THE COFFIN.
Frank Armond and Walter Lyman felt a chill pass over their frames as they gazed down upon the coffin and the four burly, rough-looking men standing around it.