him. But for the discharged revolver in his pocket, and his knowledge of what lay in the two sleeping bunks, he might almost have persuaded himself that the events of the last two hours were the illusions of a strangely disordered brain.He had investigated the cabin inside and outside, had left nothing undone that a searcher could possibly do. The mystery of it all seemed to lie beyond human power of solving. As he remained there, sentinel-like in the darkness, his hand strayed to his pocket and brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch. He carefully stuffed the bowl with fine cut leaf, and then absent-mindedly returned both pouch and pipe to his pocket. For a while longer he lingered by the doorway, his unseeing glance roving slowly about him. Then, with an ironic shrug, he suddenly stirred and stepped out into the clearing. Inasmuch as he had seen everything there was to be seen about the cabin and its immediate premises, it occurred to him that he might as well extend his circle. The intuitive sense that belongs to all ramblers of the silent places seemed to tell him during the last few minutes that he was alone in the valley. The "feel," the woodsmen and mountaineers say, has nothing to do with the consciousness of smell or hearing or sight. Dexter merely felt that now there was no one else in the neighborhood. He did not expect to make any momentous discoveries, but a restive will demanded action of some sort. Flashing his light before him, he chose his direction at random and strode across the clearing. At the edge of the open ground he found a runway that wild animals had trod out through the thicket during seasons past. He glanced among the trailing branches and checked himself abruptly, his eyes blankly staring. In the snow he saw the freshly made outline of a narrow, high-arched foot--a woman's shoeprint. CHAPTER V SHADOWS OF SILENCE In a moment Dexter was on his knees, with his face close to the ground, and he studied the marks in the snow with the peering concentration of a man trying to read a page of fine-lettered type. A light dusting of wind-blown drift had begun to form in the trampled depression, and instead of crumbling there now was a slight banking up around the edges. As near as he could reckon by the faint clews vouchsafed him, the print was less than an hour and more than a half hour old. So this woman, whoever she was, had evidently been there when the murders were committed. The officer's mouth was set in a harsh line as he scrambled to his feet. He had found a trail at last, and
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