"When I left marster he was sitting at the door of the vault, where we thought the dead body of my poor murdered young mistess was hid; and when I comed back I found this here!" sobbed Joe, pointing to the wreck.
"Good heaven! my man, this is a frightful story that you tell me! Sit yourself down on the ground, and give me that pick which you are using for a crutch! I must go to work here," exclaimed Captain Pendleton, taking the pick from the negro and beginning to dig vigorously at the mass of fallen stone and mortar.
The men and boys who had gone after implements now came hurrying back, with picks, spades, hoes, rakes, etc., over their shoulders.
They immediately fell to work with a zeal and energy inspired by curiosity and terror; and while the boys held the lighted pine knots high above their heads, the men dug away at the mass with all their might and main.
It was a wild scene, that deep glen; the heap of smoking ruins in the midst, the affrighted crowd of workers around it, the flaming torches held on high, the spectral gravestones gleaming here and there; the whole encircled by dark, towering mountains, and canopied by a murky, midnight sky!
In almost dead silence the fearful work went on.
The first body exhumed was that of the unfortunate Sheriff Benthwick, quite dead. It was borne tenderly off to some distance, and laid down on a bed of dried leaves beneath the shelter of an oak-tree.
Then four other bodies were dug out from the mass, among them that of the bailiff Purley. And these were carried and laid beside that of the sheriff.
And now, though the workmen dug away at the ruins as vigorously as ever, they found nothing but broken timbers, stone, and mortar. No sign of Lyon or Sybil Berners was to be seen. A wild hope sprang up in the heart of Joe—a hope that in some miraculous manner his young master and mistress had escaped this terrible destruction—a hope that the little Skye terrier would by no means encourage, for she continued to run around the ruins, and in and out among the legs of the workmen, to the serious danger of her own life and limbs, and to bark and whine and paw, and assert in every emphatic manner a little brute could use, that her master and mistress were really under there and nowhere else.
"You'll drive me to despair, you little devil of a dog! You'd make 'em there, whether they're there or not, and I tell you they an't there!" cried Joe in desperation.