y had
entered.

"Yes, I suppose so," said Chris thoughtfully; "but it makes one think of
ever so far back when all this dust must have been alive--all fierce
men, fighting, some to kill, others to save their lives. I don't know;
it doesn't seem so very horrid, though I don't like treading on all
their dust--and--and--"

"Bones," suggested Ned.

"No; because they're not bones now, only the shape of bones. See how
that all crumbled-away when my father picked it up. Dust and ashes, we
ought to call it. Do you want to go back?"

"N-no, I think not. I say, what a fight it must have been!"

"Yes," said Chris, with a deep breath that sounded like a sigh. "One
seems to fancy one can see the men who had the white skulls being driven
back from this cell into that one, and I shouldn't wonder if we find
that--"

"Yes," came the doctor's voice from the next place, "it's wonderfully
interesting. The civilised men must have been making a desperate stand
here, and I fully expect that we shall find that they were driven back
from cell to cell. Yes," he said, with his voice growing fainter.
"What do you say, Griggs?"

"It's worse in here, sir, and--yes, worse still in the next place."

"Driven back from cell to cell," cried the doctor, "and it's my
impression that we shall find the remains of women and children in the
farthest one. We shall hit upon the scene of a terrible massacre--the
destruction of the race who built-up this place."

The boys had joined the speakers now, just in time to hear Wilton
speak--

"But I say, Lee, aren't you letting your imagination carry you a little
too far?"

"I think not," replied the doctor quietly. "Look here; you cannot call
this imagination. Small as the space is in these rock chambers, there
are the remains of scores of men who fought desperately for their lives.
To me it seems like a vivid reproduction of the past."

"How far back?" said Bourne.

"Ah, that is beyond me. How long would it take these bones to decay to
this extent as they lay here just as their owners fell? It is a
question that no man can answer--one dependent upon the action of the
air in a climate like this, with the remains sheltered from sun and
rain, to gradually pass away into dust. You can see plainly enough that
these are not the remains found in some burial place, added to year
after year, age after age. This slaughter must have been the work of
only a few hours, and the people lie piled-up a