But as we glided silently in single file along the trail, I felt hope dying within me. All things about us seemed deserted; scarcely a living creature could be heard amid the dense brush; scarcely a dead leaf stirred, scarcely a bird chirped or twittered. It was as if I had invaded a realm of the dead, a realm of specters and shadows.... By the time we had reached a remembered pine-grove beside a clear-bubbling rivulet, I was almost in a despondent mood, which was only accentuated when I observed that the grove was forsaken. Yet how well I recalled the enthusiasm with which Damon and I had set forth from this very spot! While Yasma and the men waited cross-legged on the ground, I began carefully to explore the grove. Actually, I expected to find nothing, and at first I found what I expected. Then one by one I came across various relics, insignificant in themselves, which pained me like the opening of old wounds. First it was merely a bent and rusting tin; then the ashes of a campfire, a scrap of old newspaper, the stub of a cigarette, or a broken penknife clinging to the bark of a tree; and, finally, a half-used and forgotten notebook and pencil, which I picked up and bore away for possible future needs. 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: