After a time we came to a place that I knew. There were the remains of a
fire--a few smouldering wood ashes still cast a red glow, but the bulk
of the ashes were cold. I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind
it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the
rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissary spoke a
word to the officer, and be cried:

'Halt!'

The soldiers were ordered to spread around and watch, and then we
commenced to examine the ruins. The commissary himself began to lift
away the charred boards and rubbish. These the soldiers took and piled
together. Presently he started back, then bent down and rising beckoned
me.

'See!' he said.

It was a gruesome sight. There lay a skeleton face downwards, a woman by
the lines--an old woman by the coarse fibre of the bone. Between the
ribs rose a long spike-like dagger made from a butcher's sharpening
knife, its keen point buried in the spine.

'You will observe,' said the commissary to the officer and to me as he
took out his note book, 'that the woman must have fallen on her dagger.
The rats are many here--see their eyes glistening among that heap of
bones--and you will also notice'--I shuddered as he placed his hand on
the skeleton--'that but little time was lost by them, for the bones are
scarcely cold!'

There was no other sign of any one near, living or dead; and so