on, that seemed to shake the mountain
side.

All sprung to their feet, and stood gazing in amazement at each other
until the echoes of the thunder died away. There was silence for a
moment after, and then Moloch suddenly burst into a peal of laughter, in
which he was soon joined by all his companions, with the exception of
Satan, who sat frowning upon them.

"What is the meaning of this rudeness?" he sternly demanded.

"Oh, boss! don't you know? We are laughing at the beaks! They have blown
themselves up in the old Haunted Chapel!" answered one of the party.

"Good Heaven! A wholesale murder! I was not prepared for that!"
exclaimed the captain.

"A wholesale murder, or a wholesale accident, if you please, boss! but
no murder. Nobody told them to take lights down into that vault, where
there was gunpowder lying around loose! And if the trap was set for one
meddler and caught a dozen, why, so much the better, I say! And I don't
think it could a caught much less than a dozen, seeing as there were
about fifteen or twenty men in the chapel when I spied it this afternoon
from my cover in the woods on the mountain behind it, and I reckon there
must a' been more than half of them killed."

"Hush!" said Satan; "don't you see that this lady is nearly fainting
with terror?"

Sybil was indeed as white as a ghost, and on the very verge of swooning.
But she managed to command nerve enough to ask:

"Was--can you tell me--was my husband in the chapel this afternoon?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!" answered the robber, who had immediately taken his cue
from the glance of his captain's eye. "Oh, no, ma'am, I met him on his
road to Blackville early this afternoon."

This was partly true, for the man _had_ really seen Lyon Berners when he
was walking along the river road to meet Joe. Sybil believed it to be
wholly true, and uttered an exclamation of thankfulness.

The wine passed more freely, and the men grew merrier, wilder, and more
uproarious. Sybil became very much alarmed; and not so much by the noisy
orgies of these rude revellers, as by the dreadful gaze of Moloch fixed
upon her from the opposite end of the table where he sat, and the
offensive language of Satan's eyes whenever they turned towards her.

At length, unable to bear the trial longer, she arose from her seat, and
courtesying to these brigands as she would have done to any set of
gentlemen of whom she was taking leave, Sybil left the cavern, followed
by Gentiliska.

"I