WEST SHORE.
a grassy spot in which to tether him. A few steps in
advance of where I Btood was a little hillock, rising
not more than ten or twelve feet above the surround
ing surface, oval and smooth in outline, and crowned
at the summit with a pile of loose stones. Dropping
the lariat, I mounted this elevation and sprang upon
the stones, with the design of getting a more extended
view of the vicinity that I might select the best pos
sible grazing spot for Pedro.
" Scarcely, however, had I gained a footing upon
the stones when I felt them begin to sink beneath my
weight, and ere I could leap clear of them the hillock
seemed to open and swallow them. Throwing my
arms out wildly on either side to save myself, I grasped
the crumbling edges of the aperture through which
the stones had disappeared, and there I hung by ten
sion of muscle and sinew, suspended over what?
" I knew not. Nor could I form the faintest con
ception of the nature or extent of the underground
opening beneath me. It might be an infernal pit
leading into the bowels of the earth 1 Or an old min
ing shaft, deep, deep down, with slimy water and pois
onous gasses awaiting me at the bottom! A cold
perspiration came out upon me at every pore, and my
very ribs seemed to contract and crush my heart in a
spasm of terror, as, bit by bit, the gravelly formation
to which I clung crumbled beneath my hold and fell
into the abyss below.
" My lower limbs were hanging in space, and, feel
around as I might with my feet, I could touch nothing.
Moreover, every motion of my body, however slight,
only served to dislodge more of the ragged edge to
which I clung, and the opening was widening with
fearful rapidity. I tried to listen as the fragments
fell, hoping to hear them strike bottom; but a sudden
wind, forerunner of the storm, came moaning down
the gorge and joined its voice to that of the noisy
waters to baffle me.
" My arms and shoulders ached and grew numb
with the unwonted strain to which they were sub
jected, and I knew that in a few minutes more, at
most, my hold must relax. Soon everything grew
seemingly dark around me, and the roaring of the
winds and waters softened and receded, and, strangely
enough, took the sound of Helen Poindexter's well
remembered voice calling to me in accents of hope and
reassurance. I was struggling to cry out in response
when suddenly the whole top of the hillock apparently
gave way at once, and I went down with it.
" How far did I fall? Well, as nearly as I can
tell, about fifteen feet. Quito far enough, in my ex
hausted condition, to stun me, though I imagine the
gravel that went with me and almost buried me alive,
had a good deal to do with producing the unconscious
ness that overcame me for a time. But my head was
uncovered, and it was the steady drip of rain in my
face that finally revived me. I opened my eyes, re
called my extraordinary situation, and, looking up
ward, saw, far above me, an opening apparently four
or five feet in diameter through which a patch of
stormy sky was visible, and raindrops were pattering
down upon me.
" Slowly, and rather painfully, I drew myself out
of the gravel and debris of decayed sticks of wood in
which I was partially buried. Then I peered about,
endeavoring, with the aid of the light from the open
ing above, to determine the character and extent of
the trap that had so effectually caught me. I soon
ascertained that I was in an apartment at least twenty
feet square a cavern, I thought at first, but a few mo
ments' inspection of the place put that theory to
flight. The walls were lined with rough slabs of wood
and the place bore every indication of having been
constructed by the hands of men. I was not long in
arriving at the conclusion that I was in an old, de
serted dug-out, a species of habitation often resorted
to by miners in early days in localities where Indians
were troublesome, because they combined cheapness
with greater security than was afforded by an ordin
ary frontier cabin of logs.
" ' If it be a dug-out,' I reflected, 1 there will bo
an opening somewhere by which I may once more
reach the outer air, for it is not probable that its origi
nal occupants adopted my mode of gaining ingress.'
" With this thought I began an examination of
the place, and in a short time had made two rather
startling discoveries. Ono was that the entrance,
which was on the side next the stream, was closed by
a huge slab of sandstone which looked as if it might
tax my strength to the utmost to displace, and before
making the attempt I would have an hour's work in
removing the pile of stones, gravel and rubbish that I
had brought down with me, the bulk of which lay
banked against the stone.
" Discovery number two was of a ghastly nature,
being nothing less than a human skeleton reclining
with head and shoulders against the wall in a dark
corner.
" Such a find, even above ground in the broad
glare of day, has a tendency to unsettle the steadiest
nerves. What, then, were my sensations in that
vault-like place, with the storm raging above, tho rain
pouring in through tho broken roof, and tho darkness
of coming night settling down upon mo so rapidly
that I knew it would be useless to attempt tho work
of liberating myself beforo the morning I
f Having matches in my pocket, I gathered somo
of the litter that strewed tho earth floor and essayed
to light a fire ; but it proved a feeble, flickering blnze,
and depressed rather than cheered me, by filling the