"When do you expect your companions in?"
"They drop in at any time in the evening. Some of them will be here soon, and then we will have supper."
The darkening of the cave now indicated that the sun was setting. And soon the wild hostess clapped her hands and called in her pale attendant to light up the cavern. And the phantom vanished for a few moments, and then returned with two tall silver candlesticks, supporting two such large wax candles that Sybil saw at a glance that they must have been stolen from the altar of a Catholic chapel. And she shivered again at perceiving that she was the guest of the worst of outlaws—sacrilegious church-robbers! But soon her attention was attracted by the splendor of the scene around, when the stalactite walls of the cavern, lighted up by the great candles, emitted millions of prismatic rays of every brilliant hue, as if they were encrusted with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, topazes, and carbuncles, all of the purest fire.
"Splendid, is it not? What palace chamber can compare to ours?" inquired the girl, on observing the evident admiration with which her guest gazed upon the scene.
Before Sybil had time to reply there was the heavy trampling of feet near at hand, and the next moment four rough looking men entered the cave.
Involuntarily Sybil shrank closer to her hostess, as they passed near her. But not one of them either did or said anything to alarm or offend her. Each one, in his turn, gruffly greeted her by nodding, as he pulled off his hat and threw it into a corner, and then seated himself at the table.
The elfin girl clapped her hands, and when her attendant appeared, she ordered that supper should be immediately brought in.
Meantime Sybil furtively observed the four robbers, but one of them especially fascinated her gaze, with something of the terrible fascination that the boa-constrictor is said to exercise upon the beautiful birds of the Brazilian forest.
He was a great red-haired and red-bearded giant, whose large limbs and coarse features had well earned for him the nick-name of "Moloch;" and Moloch, Sybil instinctively knew this man to be. The other three were ordinary, hirsute, dirty ruffians, upon whom she scarcely bestowed a glance. Her eyes continually reverted to Moloch, from whom she could not long keep them. He was huge, ugly, brutal, ferocious; but he commanded attention, if only from the power that was within him.
But what terrified Sybil the most was this—that her own fascinated eyes at length attracted his, and he looked at her with a devouring gaze that made her eyelids fall and her very heart sink within her.