The spot where Sir Jeffrey had fallen was soft ground, whereon the lightest footstep must have left a clear impression. Indeed, around the recumbent figure the ground showed a mass of indistinguishable marks. But proceeding thence, as I have said, in the direction of the neighbouring coppice, was this faint trail.
“It looks,” I said, in a voice hushed with something very like awe, “it looks like the track of ... a child!”
“Look again!” snapped East.
I stooped over the first set of marks. Clearly indented, I perceived the impressions of two small, bare feet, and, eighteen or twenty inches ahead, those of two small hands. I experienced a sudden chill; my blood seemed momentarily to run coldly in my veins, and I longed to depart from the shadow of the trees, from the neighbourhood of the Black Gap, and from the neighbourhood of the man who had died there. For it seemed to me that a barefooted infant had recently crawled from the side of the dead man into the coppice overhanging the tarn.
Looking up, I found East’s steely eyes set upon me strangely.
“Well!” said he, “do you not miss something that you anticipated finding?”
I hesitated, fearfully. Then:
“Sir Jeffrey carries no cane,” I began——
“Good! I had failed to note that. Good! But what else?”
Closely I surveyed the body, noting the disarranged garments, the discoloured face.