four hundred years had been allowed them for
its completion.

Soon we reached a veritable maze of these passages. We must have taken
a dozen or more turns, first to the right, then to the left. I had
been marking our way on my memory as well as possible, but I soon gave
up the attempt as hopeless.

Several times our guide turned so quickly that we could scarcely follow
him. When we signified by gestures our desire to go slower he seemed
surprised; of course, he expected us to see in the dark as well as he.

Then a dim light appeared, growing brighter as we advanced. Soon I saw
that it came through an opening in the wall to our left, which we were
approaching. Before the opening the guide halted, motioning us to
enter.

We did so, and found ourselves in an apartment no less than royal.

Several blazing urns attached to the walls furnished the light,
wavering but brilliant. There were tables and rude seats, fashioned
from the same prismatic stones which covered the column in the lake,
and from their surfaces a thousand points of color shone dazzlingly.

At one side was a long slab of granite covered with the skins of some
animal, dry, thick, and soft. The walls themselves were of the hardest
granite, studded to a height of four or five feet with tiny,
innumerable spots of gold.

Harry crossed to the middle of the apartment and stood gazing curiously
about him. I turned to the door and looked down the outer passage in
both directions--our guide had disappeared.

"We appear to be friends of the family," said Harry with a grin.

"Thanks to Desiree, yes."

"Thanks to the devil! What did she mean--what could she mean? Was it
one of her jokes? For I can't believe that she would--would--"

"Have sent us to death? Well--who knows? Yes, it may have been one of
her jokes," I lied.

For, of course, Harry knew nothing of the cause of Desiree's desire for
revenge on me, and it would have served no good purpose to tell him.

We talked for an hour or more, examining our apartment meanwhile with
considerable curiosity.

The gold excited our wonder; had it come from Huanuco four hundred
years ago, or had they found it here in the mountain?

I examined the little blocks of metal or gems with which the tables and
seats were inlaid, but could make nothing of them. They resembled a
carbon formation sometimes found in quartzite, but were many times more
brilliant than anything I had ever seen, excepting preciou