For an hour we searched diligently both within the avenue and outside it, until of a sudden a cry from Warr caused my heart to leap.

“Good Heavens! Mr Woodhouse!” he gasped, bending to a clump of long grass in a deep hollow behind the huge gnarled trunk of one of the great oaks. “Come and look here!”

I dashed forward to the spot over which he held his hurricane lantern, saw what he had discovered, and stood appalled, dumbfounded, absolutely rooted to the spot.

The sight presented there rendered the mystery of that evening even more bewildering and inscrutable.

Chapter Four.

Wherein a Strange Story is Told.

For the moment we were both too aghast to speak.

The clump of rank high grass in the hollow had been beaten down, and in the centre, revealed by the uncertain light of our lanterns, lay a young man, whose white face and wide-open, sightless eyes told us both the terrible truth.

He had been murdered!

As I bent to examine him as he lay slightly on his side, I saw that from an ugly knife-wound in his back blood was still oozing, and had soaked into the ground around him. Both hands were tightly clenched, as though the unfortunate fellow had died in a spasm of agony, while upon one finger something shone, which I discovered to be a gold ring of curious, foreign workmanship, shaped like a large scarab, or sacred beetle, about half an inch long, and nearly as broad—an unusual ring which attracted my curiosity.

The grass around bore distinct marks of a desperate struggle, and from the position in which the young man was lying, it seemed as though, being struck suddenly, he had stumbled, fallen forward, and expired.

“He’s been murdered, sir, without a doubt,” exclaimed Warr, at last breaking the silence. “I thought you said you heard a woman’s voice?”

“So I did,” I replied, much puzzled at the discovery, for, to tell the truth, I had half-expected to find Lolita herself. Even at that moment I could have sworn that the cry was hers. “It seems, however, that I must have been mistaken.”

“But who can he be?” exclaimed the 

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