“I know,” cried Saxe excitedly: “watching us.”
“No,” said Melchior: “he has not the sense, unless— Here, I must have hit some one else in the dark. There were two. Give me the light!”
He snatched the lanthorn and stepped farther in, to bend down over another prostrate figure.
“It is!” he cried. “Pierre! I don’t quite understand as yet. It must be—yes, I see. The wretch!—it is his doing. He must have been watching us, and set this creature—this animal—to do his work—do what he wanted. But no: Herr Dale, Herr Saxe, I am puzzled.”
“Hooray!” shouted Saxe. “I have it!”
“What!” cried Dale, who was stanching the blood which flowed from his nose.
“The crystals!” cried Saxe. “They must have hidden them here.”
Melchior took a dozen steps farther into the ice-cave, having to stoop now, and then he uttered a triumphant jodel.
“Come here, herrs!” he cried, holding down the lanthorn. “Look! All are here.”
Saxe darted forward, to be followed more cautiously by Dale, and the party stood gazing down at the glittering heap of magnificent crystals hidden there as the least likely place to be searched.