“What is it?” asked the elder in a ghostly whisper.

“My God! don’t ask me to tell!”

“You forget that we are both physicians.”

“But not that we are human beings; thank Heaven forever that you did not look upon the sight my eyes saw a moment ago.  Let it suffice, doctor, to say that of the three men and women to whom we bade good-bye within the past twenty minutes not one is alive!  The fiends have been there.”

Not the least singular fact connected with this hideous incident was that the devils who committed the unspeakable crime had vanished, so far as could be seen, as utterly as if the ground had opened beneath their feet and swallowed them.  Two men had come back upon the scene within a few minutes after all this was done, and yet the doers were nowhere in sight.  What was the meaning of their hasty departure?

It was unreasonable to think they had gone far.  They must be in the vicinity.  They must have noticed the absence of the doctor and his companions; doubtless they were looking for them along shore; possibly they had started over some of the trails and ere long would strike the one along which the three had fled.

“A wonderful Providence has preserved us thus far,” said Jack Everson; “but it is too much to expect we shall emerge unscathed from this hell hole.”

“I hope nothing will happen to Mary before we rejoin her.”

“We shall be with her in a minute.”

Nevertheless, a vague fear disturbed both.  The parent was again leading, and he unconsciously hastened his footsteps.  Only a slight distance beyond they came to the small opening where they had left her standing but a brief while before.  Since the men had passed over the intervening distance to the river it was unlikely that anything had occurred to alarm the young woman, but there was no saying what might happen in those times and in that part of the world.

The real shock came to the parent when he turned in the trail and saw the open space but failed to observe his daughter.  He hurried on without speaking, but Jack, directly behind him, had made the discovery, for a moment he was so breathless and dizzy that he barely saved himself from falling.  His heart became lead, and the awful conviction got hold of him that the most woeful affliction of all had come upon them, and that his betrothed was lost irrecoverably.

But the sight of the anguish of the parent when he turned about and faintly gasped, “Where is my child?” brought the self-command of the young man back.

It was the despairing question wrung from the heart of the parent, with a grief that was no keener than that of Jack Everson himself.  Here was another instance of the appalling suddenness with which tragedies began and were completed in this infernal country.  A band of half a dozen was cut off within the space of a few minutes, and now, in still less time, a young woman vanished as if she had never been.