The captain shook his head slowly. He stared at the hieroglyphics with a thoughtful face, with his brow knitted into tiny wrinkles over his half-closed eyes.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A CRY IN THE NIGHT.
We all, more or less, shared Captain Rudstone’s curiosity. For a minute we gazed in silence at the strange marks—the company men stolidly, the two voyageurs with disdainful shrugs of the shoulders. Pemecan touched the spot with something like awe, and Christopher Burley followed his example.
“This is a very odd thing,” he muttered. “I wish I could take the plaster just as it is back to London with me.”
“I’ve seen nothing like it,” declared Luke Hutter, “and I’ve lived in the wilderness, man and boy, for nigh onto fifty years.”
Naturally Fort Beaver having been my home, the rest looked to me to throw some light on the mystery of the cryptogram—if such it was; but I was no wiser than they, and they questioned me in vain. I remembered the fireplace as being always in sound condition, and as my father had never spoken of the matter, I judged that the marks had been cut years before his time—perhaps during the youth of my maternal grandfather.
“It may be so, Mr. Carew,” said Christopher Burley; “but to my mind the work is of more recent date. I should say the stone had been purposely removed, and then put back after the hieroglyphics were carved on the plaster. I would take a copy, but unfortunately I have no material at hand—”