They followed him and, to their surprise, came presently out on a second clearing, much smaller than the first. Here a cabin, entirely unobservable from the main opening, stood more boldly than all the rest, despite its isolation. It was entirely encircled by trees, save on the western side, where a broad breach in the line of foliage admitted a flood of relentless sunlight. The three men started forward eagerly, for this house might even then have contained a tenant. Its door was closed, its windows barred. The roof had not entirely fallen, for a willow’s branches swept across it with a thousand restless whispers, as though to a being within. But here, too, lank weeds clawed the walls, and melons rotted before the threshold. Vytal tried the door. It resisted his strong pressure. But Marlowe, raising to the level of his shoulder a large stone, not unlike a cannon-ball in shape and size, flung it against the oaken barrier. It crashed through a decayed board and fell inside, first with a dull thud, and then, as it rolled, a crackling sound like the snapping of dry twigs. Vytal looked through the aperture, but could distinguish nothing for the gloom, and Marlowe peered in with no better success. “It holds all the shadows of the forest in its heart,” he said, thrusting a hand through the hole. “There is a bar of iron across the doorway.” He dislodged the metal rod, and letting it fall, pulled open the door, whose rusty hinges creaked remonstrance as he entered. Vytal and the governor, following him, found themselves standing on hard, cold earth, to which the stone and iron bar had fallen. A sudden gust of wind slammed the door behind them. Vytal stepped back to reopen it and admit light into the gloomy interior, but the last rays of sunshine crept now almost horizontally through a rift in the western wall. “They desecrate a tomb,” said Marlowe, “by revealing its contents. Look!” He pointed to a number of white streaks in a corner on the earth. The sunbeams frolicked across them. “They are the bones of a fellow-creature,” exclaimed the governor, leaving the cabin with horror. He spoke truth. In the corner lay a man’s bones, the skull, the body’s frame, the limbs, all close together, but separate. “There are two skulls!” ejaculated Marlowe. “No; one is but the stone you threw.” Vytal was not mistaken, for the stone had rolled among the white streaks, snapping some and crushing others to a powder that shone like phosphorus in the sunlight. The two men turned away from the ghastly sight in silence, to survey the room. An old musket stood against the wall, its barrel poked through the narrow chink, peering out at the forest. A rusty pike lay near by, its long, wooden staff stretched out from the white finger-bones of its dead possessor.