e way up, clambered again to the
upper cave. Gloria had not stirred. He moved about her, went a dozen
paces deeper into the great cavern, and threw down his wood. Breaking
branches into short lengths he quickly got a fire going. The flames
spurted up eagerly, bright and cheery, and threw dancing light among the
wavering shadows. He brought the bedding-roll closer and opened it into
a rough-and-ready bed. Then he called to Gloria.

"You'd better lie here by the fire," he told her. "You're apt to catch
cold there."

She was sitting up, watching him. Now she rose listlessly and came
forward, dropping down into a sitting position upon the blankets, her
chilled hands out toward the blaze.

"I don't like the look of this storm," he told her. "It is up to us to
hurry. I am going to look around now. I think you had better rest all
you can so as to be ready to make a start back as soon as I find out
whether we are on a wild-goose chase or not."

"You mean--we may start back to-day?"

"I don't know what I am going to find, of course; whether I am going to
find anything. But if we can get only a couple of hours on our way
to-day, it's just that much gained."

"You are going to leave me here?"

"I won't be far." With that he set fire to a dry pine faggot, the best
torch available, and left her, going deeper into the cave. She watched
him, marvelling at the size of the cavern. He went on a score of paces;
he seemed to be ascending a steepening slant floor and then to have gone
over a sort of ridge and to be descending again. But still going further
from her. Presently she knew that the tunnel had turned sharply to the
right; she could hear the thud of his boots and for a little while could
see the flare of his torch against a wall of rock; he himself had passed
out of her sight.

But she knew that he had not gone a great deal further. For he was not
so far away that she could not hear him; he was going back and forth; at
irregular intervals she saw a dim, ghostly light playing upon the dark
cavern walls. And, despite the weary ache of a hardship-tortured body,
she began to be interested in his search. If there were, in truth, such
gold here somewhere as he and her father with him had dreamed of--gold
for which seven men had died sixty years ago, for which old Loony
Honeycutt had hungered all these years, for which Brodie and his
following and even a city man like Gratton were like so many ravening
wolves on the trail--gold