"Good Heaven! You don't mean that, Joe!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton.
"Yes, I do, sir; worse luck! which you can see for yourself, as even poor little ignorant Nelly knows it," wept Joe.
And the little Skye terrier, as if to confirm the negro's words, ran and leaped upon the captain, whining pathetically, and then ran backward and forward between him and the heap of ruins, as if to impress upon his mind that her dear master and mistress were really buried there, and to implore him to come to their assistance.
But other people were now pouring rapidly in upon the scene of the catastrophe.
Exclamations of horror and dismay were uttered; then pine knots were sought and lighted, and everybody crowded around the ruins.
"There are human beings buried beneath this pile; for Heaven's sake, friends, lose no time; but disperse and find tools to dig this away!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, energetically.
Several of the by-standers started at once for the nearest farm-houses to procure the needful tools.
Captain Pendleton turned to Joe.
"Tell me now," he said; "how came Mr. and Mrs. Berners in this place?"
Joe related all that he knew of their escape from the sheriff's officers, their accidental meeting with him, their arrival at the Haunted Chapel, the mysterious disappearance of Sybil, the visit of the constables and militia-men in search of the burglars; the means that his master and himself took to discover traces of Sybil through the instinct of her little dog; the reasons they had, through the behavior of the little Skye terrier, to believe that the lady had been taken down into the vault and robbed and murdered; his own departure in search of tools to take up the flagstones over the vault, and finally his return to the scene of action to find the Haunted Chapel one mass of ruins.