WE LET HIM DOWN SLOWLY.
He probably hadn’t been out of sight more than sixty seconds, but it seemed like sixty minutes to us waiting for his reappearance. Tom shouted. He answered for us to wait; and then emerged, waving his readiness to come up.
“We’ll never see him again,” Brent said as he clambered over the top.
“Where do you think it’s gone?” Tom asked.
“I guess the water rose just high enough since we were here to carry him away. And there’s a space under that boulder where the water leaves the gully. It’s just wide enough to permit any ordinary-sized man’s body to pass through. It’s safe to say that by now the hermit, or whoever it was, is divided into some hundred pieces. The rocks and the water below the gully wouldn’t even leave a button whole.”
“We’ve been spared that much distress at any rate,” I said, as we proceeded to leave the cleft and gully behind us.
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “I suppose it’s a selfish way to feel, but I think we have enough to do, without taking upon our shoulders the full responsibility of a hermit’s dead body. Fate is kind after all.”
Gloomy people we were that morning. Walking back in the midst of glorious green earth and sunshine, we should have been full of the joy of living. But we were not.
Mystery upon mystery. Tainted death! All had succeeded in wearing down fragile human nerves. We were even getting irritable with one another. Brent had lost his quiet composure and drawling humor. Tom was morose. And I was completely unnerved.