were obliterated in the gloom.
But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other
habitant. But the walls themselves, where the light from without
revealed them, held Bill's fascinated gaze.

The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind.
"This cave--I've never seen a cave just like this. Virginia----"

The man stepped forward and scratched a match on the stone. It flared;
the shadows raced away. Then Bill's breath caught in a half-sob.

Instantly he smothered the match. The darkness dropped around them like
a curtain. But in that instant of light Bill beheld a scene that tore
at his heart. Against the cavern wall, lost in the irremediable
darkness, he had seen a strange, white shape--a ghostly thing that lay
still and caught the match's gleam--a grim relic of dead years.

He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke.
"You'd better go out, Virginia--into the light," he advised.

"Why? Is it--_danger?_"

"Not danger." His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her.
"Only wickedness. But it isn't anything you'd like to see."

The single match-flare had revealed him the truth. For one little
fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim
and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years
ago,--a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair. But the shape of the
cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the
story plainly. The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and
garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply
made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine. Bill had found his
father's sepulcher at last!

* * * * *

For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom. He understood, now, why
his previous search had never revealed the mine. He had supposed that
his father had operated along some stream, washing the gold from its
gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft. In all
probability, considering the richness of their content, they had
burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had
carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out.
He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was
doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern. The snowslide of
some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck
down the trees they had blazed, and covere