“Yes.”
A murmur of admiring comment passed through the group, and one or two enthusiastic boys pounded Gordon on the shoulder. But the serious-looking boy was absorbed in thought.
“Whoever it was,” he finally said, “must have turned down the road—or up.”
“Sure,” said Gordon.
It was characteristic of him that the suspicion of foul play had sat but lightly in his thoughts up to this moment. The footprint near the chasm had puzzled him and he had attached a significance to the wet spot on the rock—perhaps a greater significance than it deserved. He had also wondered how the three slender logs, out of which he had fashioned the rough couch, came to be at the bottom of the chasm. But he was altogether too lighthearted to connect any or all of these circumstances with the idea of a crime. With him, tracking and such arts were a delightful species of amusement, and the idea of using these things as a means to a serious end had never entered his head.
But now he realized that this serious, precise, calculating boy who sat at his elbow was endeavoring to squeeze information out of these trivial signs and make them point to the solution of a secret, the very existence of which Gordon had hardly suspected. He perceived, somewhat to his annoyance, that he had only noticed those things which appealed to his romantic love of woodcraft, and that certain other things which Harry Arnold might have seen had entirely escaped him.
“You say the pamphlet was lying in the mud?”
“Yes—it—it never occurred to me how it got there.”
“Of course not—you were in a great hurry. Don’t think I’m criticising you. You’ve got the silver cross coming to you for what you did.”
“Honest—do you think so?”