Presently, in the same disagreeable, distinct, nasal, and measured voice, the speaker resumed the message: 

“Until last evening it has been taken for granted that the American Intelligence Officer, McKay, and his companion, Miss Erith, made insane through suffering after having drunk at a spring the water of which we had prepared for them according to plan, had either jumped or fallen from the eastward cliffs of Les Errues into the gulf through which flows the Staubbach.

“But, up to last night, my men, who descended by the Via Mala, have been unable to find the bodies of these two Americans, although there is, on the cliffs above, every evidence that they plunged down there to the valley of the brook below, which is now being searched.

“If, therefore, my men fail to discover these bodies, the alarming presumption is forced upon us that these two Americans have once more tricked us; and that they may still be hiding in the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.

“In that event proper and drastic measures will be taken, the air-squadron on the northern frontier co-operating.”

The voice ceased:  the flags whistled and snapped in the wind for a little while longer, then the signaller came to stiffest attention.

“Tell them we descend by the Via Mala,” added the nasal voice.

The flags swung sharply into motion for a few moments more; then the Prussian officer pocketed his notebook; the signaller furled his flags; and, as they turned and strode westward along the border of the forest, the girl rose to her knees on her bed of leaves and peered after them.

What to do she scarcely knew.  Her comrade, McKay, had been gone since dawn in quest of something to keep their souls and bodies en liaison—­mountain hare, a squirrel perhaps, perhaps a songbird or two, or a pocketful of coral mushrooms—­anything to keep them alive on that heart-breaking trail of duty at the end of which sat old man Death awaiting them, wearing a spiked helmet.

And what to do in this emergency, and in the absence of McKay, perplexed and frightened her; for her comrade’s strict injunction was to remain hidden until his return; and yet one of these men now moving westward there along the forest’s sunny edges had spoken of a way out and had called it the Via Mala.  And that is what McKay had been looking for—­a way out of the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues to the table-land below, where, through a cleft still more profound, rushed the black Staubbach under an endless mist of icy spray.

She must make up her mind quickly; the two men were drawing away from her—­almost out of sight now.

On her ragged knees among the leaves she groped for his coat where he had flung it, for the weather had turned oppressive in the forest of Les Errues-and fumbling, she found his notebook and pencil, and tore out a leaf: