ing the immediate future, had changed him
from a boy to a man.

Soma stood at the mouth of the cavern as we passed through, and he
grinned at the Professor. The Kanaka had discovered that the Professor
placed a monetary value upon his information regarding the long-dead
past, and he was ready to contribute to the contents of the fat notebook
whenever the opportunity occurred.

"All good people in this party," he cried. "That's mighty plain."

The Professor dived for his lead pencil. He had a scent for copy that a
New York reporter would have envied.

"How is that, Soma?" he spluttered.

"Wizard men say so," grinned the Kanaka. "Wizard men tell much truth."

"But what did the wizard men say?"

"They say that only the bad boys can slip," answered Soma. "No good men
either. Big hole just for bad people. That what witch doctors say long,
long time ago. They call it Ledge of Death."

The Professor's pencil raced madly across the paper, and Holman looked
back at the black depths with a grim smile upon his clean-cut features.

"I suppose there have been exceptions," he remarked quietly. "There are
exceptions to every rule, and I suppose an occasional bad egg escaped a
fall into this abyss in spite of the wizard men's prophecy."

Leith looked up quickly, and he flushed angrily when he found that the
young fellow's eyes were upon him. Barbara Herndon gave a little
hysterical laugh, and the Professor stopped writing and looked around
inquiringly as if he was in doubt whether he had missed something of
importance.

"What is it?" he inquired. "I didn't hear."

"It was nothing," replied Leith, in his slow, drawling voice. "Holman
suggested that the word of the wizard men might not be infallible, and
lest we have some one who ran the gauntlet under false colours we had
better move on so as to keep the exception out of danger."

The cavern, into which we passed from the slippery ledge, did not lead
into the interior of the mountain as one would be inclined to think
after viewing it from the top of the crater. We had hardly traversed it
for more than sixty yards when we were once again in the bright
sunlight, in what appeared to be a deep, wide valley in the centre of
the island. The basalt cliffs surrounded the place on every side, and
although we had great doubts regarding Leith's veracity, we felt
inclined to accept his word that the path by which we had come was the
only one by which we could reach the spot where we