But was this to be all? In my dejection, I was almost persuaded so, when my eye was caught by a pile of stones at one end of the former camp. It was between two and three feet high, pyramidal in shape, and clearly of human workmanship. Eagerly I inspected it, at first without understanding its purpose, but with swiftly growing comprehension. Carved indistinctly on one of the stones, in small barely legible letters, were the words, "Look below!"
In a frenzy, I began tearing the stones aside, casting them in all directions in my haste.
Yet at first I discovered nothing—nothing! It was only after careful examination that I espied, between two stones in a protected position, a little scrap of ink-marked paper.
Like one receiving a message from another world, I grasped at the paper. The scrawled handwriting was that of Jasper Damon!
It was a minute before I could choke down my excitement sufficiently to read:
"Dear Prescott: I am leaving this note with hardly any hope that you will find it, or that you are not now beyond the reach of all human messages. I cannot believe that you have been spared, for after losing you in the fog and failing to reach you by shouts and pistol signals, I have discovered no sign that you still live. For my own part, I had to pass the night between two sheltered rocks on the mountainside; but, luckily, I was unhurt, and when the fog lifted for a while the next morning I managed to make my way down below the mist-belt. Then, after wandering for hours, I fell in with a searching party from camp. I was alarmed to learn that they had found no trace of you, and more alarmed when, after searching all the rest of the day, we were still without any clue. On the following morning we made a much wider hunt, and bribed and intimidated the native guides to lead us up the mountain, which they feared and hated. Still no results! You had vanished as completely as the very fog that hid you—on the next day, and still on the next we scoured the mountains, always in vain. For a week now we have lingered here, until hope has disappeared, and, in deepest sorrow, we must continue on our way.
"But while reason tells me that you have perished, I cannot keep back a vague feeling that somehow you escaped. It is merely out of a whim, and in spite of the smiles of our skeptical friends, that I am building this mound of stones to draw your attention if ever you return, and hiding this letter so that if need be it may withstand the elements for years. It will do you little enough good, but at least you will have learned that we did not willingly desert you. How you will be able to struggle out of this wilderness is a question that heaven itself may not be able to answer—I can only pray that some fortunate chance may save you as it has saved me.
"Farewell, Dan Prescott!—You cannot know how every day of my life will be overshadowed by thought of that foolhardy escapade of ours.
"Your wretched friend,
"Jasper Damon."