Stark had made a sign of extra caution, for some nameless instinct seemed to have told him that they were near the quarry now.

He paused a moment, held up his hand as if in warning; and at that instant there suddenly arose from the heart of the wood the unwonted sound of a sweet, fresh girl's voice raised in a little French song! The men looked at one another in amaze.

Were their ears deceiving them?
But no; the trilling notes came nearer.

Involuntarily they pressed forward a few paces, and then came to a dead stop.

What was it they saw?
A maiden, a young girl of perhaps seventeen summers, her hat suspended by a broad ribbon from her arm, and half filled with flowers, was wandering through the woodland tracks as quietly as though in her sheltered home across the water.