"How so?"
"Remember, that I am in the world a lone man; without ties or connexions. If I lose my life, I compromise no one by my death; but you have a mother and a bereaved sister to look to who will deserve your care."
"Hilloa," cried the admiral, "what's this?"
"What?" cried each, eagerly, and they pressed forward to where the admiral was stooping to the ground to pick up something which was nearly completely trodden into the grass.
He with some difficulty raised it. It was a small slip of paper, on which was some writing, but it was so much covered with mud as not to be legible.
"If this be washed," said Henry, "I think we shall be able to read it clearly."
"We can soon try that experiment," said George. "And as the footsteps, by some mysterious means, show themselves nowhere else but in this one particular spot, any further pursuit of inquiry about here appears useless."
"Then we will return to the house," said Henry, "and wash the mud from this paper."
"There is one important point," remarked Marchdale, "which it appears to me we have all overlooked."
"Indeed!"