any sort leading to the cabin, the snow-covered strands would have revealed themselves in the bright glare of his flashlight. He had found no wires.

The idea of a radio set occurred to him, and was immediately abandoned. Such a means of communication would require aerials and a connecting wire running to the cabin; or, if not that, at least an inside loop. Also there would have to be batteries, not to mention the bulky receiving and transmitting instruments. There was no such equipment on the premises; and an escaping fugitive could not have had time to dismantle and lug away a radio outfit. Of this he was positive: the voice he heard was not talking by wireless.

He checked up his facts, and considered the last remaining possibility--a chance so remote that it was scarcely worth thinking about. Could there be a tunnel or conduit leading underground to the cabin? He could conceive of no motive that would induce men to undertake the enormous labor of digging a trench through the forest. The notion was preposterous. But he had his report to write, and he was trained to thoroughness in all matters of investigation. It would be easy enough to determine if the ground had ever been broken.

Equipping himself with the spade he had used to pry up the floorboards, he proceeded to shovel a narrow pathway around the cabin, tossing aside the light covering of snow, and inspecting the bare soil underneath. He worked assiduously, and it did not take him a great while to complete the full circuit of the building. The ground was strewn naturally with the season's carpet of leaves and fallen twigs, and the topsoil below was the rich forest loam that requires ages in making. The experienced woodsman needed only a glance around the circular pathway to assure himself that the ground hereabouts had never been disturbed since the beginning of time. He was convinced finally, beyond all doubt. There was no tunnel.

Dexter tossed his shovel aside, and stood for a while by the open door of the cabin. His lips had fallen apart, and his head was thrown up to listen. But he heard only the familiar sounds of the forest, the moaning of the north wind in the trees, the crack and snap of sap-frozen branches. All else was silence. The eerie plaint of the owl came wavering from the darkness, but the empty, ghostly note seemed only a part of the great hush that brooded over the wilderness. The last man left on earth could not feel a sense of lonesomeness more poignant than Dexter felt at that moment, as he stood before the doorway of death, vainly waiting for some sound or movement to break the stillness about 

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