teps echoed eerily as they advanced, and the state of their
nerves can be judged when Dick and Nort jumped and exclaimed aloud as
Bud took out a flashlight and suddenly switched on the current, sending
a brilliant, though small, shaft of illumination down the stretches of
blackness.

"Did I scare you?" chuckled young Merkel.

"A little," Dick admitted. "I didn't know you had a lantern with you."

"Oh, I generally carry a small pocket torch," Bud replied. "Never can
tell when you'll be caught out after dark."

The flashlight showed the cavern to be hewn out of solid rock, though
how high the roof was, or how wide the walls from side to side, they
could not judge, for their light was not powerful enough to penetrate.
But the cave was, evidently, a big one.

Suddenly, as they walked along, Bud became aware of a growing sheen of
light ahead of them. At first he thought it was but the reflection of
his own torch on what might be crystals in the cave's sides or roof.
But as they walked on the glow increased.

Nort and Dick also noticed it, and Nort exclaimed:

"Guess this is more of a tunnel than a cave. I see daylight ahead."

"'Tisn't daylight--too red for that," objected Bud. "Looks more like a
fire."

And, a moment later, as they rounded a turn, they saw that the light
was caused by a fire. It was a fire blazing on the floor of the
cavern. Over the fire, suspended on a tripod, was a black kettle, a
veritable witch-caldron and, bending over it, if not a witch, was a
good imitation of one. For it was the figure of an old man--a man with
long, straggling white hair and a flowing white beard, as the flames
revealed. It was the same old man who had called at the ranch with his
sinister warning when he sold the Elixer of Life.

"Look!" murmured Bud, but he need not have said this. His two cousins
were looking with all the power of their staring eyes.

"It--it's him!" murmured Nort, and the others knew what he meant.

"But what's he doing?" whispered Dick.

There was hardly need to ask that question. Undoubtedly the old man
was brewing something in the kettle over the fire. There was a
peculiar odor in the air, not unpleasant, but rather overpowering.

"He's making that stuff he bottles and sells," went on Dick. "The
Elixer. And maybe----"

He did not finish the sentence. Either the cautious talk of the boy
ranchers, or some noise they made carried to the sharp ears of the old
man.

He started