“Yes, I suppose so,” said Chris thoughtfully; “but it makes one think of ever so far back when all this dust must have been alive—all fierce men, fighting, some to kill, others to save their lives. I don’t know; it doesn’t seem so very horrid, though I don’t like treading on all their dust—and—and—”
“Bones,” suggested Ned.
“No; because they’re not bones now, only the shape of bones. See how that all crumbled-away when my father picked it up. Dust and ashes, we ought to call it. Do you want to go back?”
“N–no, I think not. I say, what a fight it must have been!”
“Yes,” said Chris, with a deep breath that sounded like a sigh. “One seems to fancy one can see the men who had the white skulls being driven back from this cell into that one, and I shouldn’t wonder if we find that—”
“Yes,” came the doctor’s voice from the next place, “it’s wonderfully interesting. The civilised men must have been making a desperate stand here, and I fully expect that we shall find that they were driven back from cell to cell. Yes,” he said, with his voice growing fainter. “What do you say, Griggs?”
“It’s worse in here, sir, and—yes, worse still in the next place.”
“Driven back from cell to cell,” cried the doctor, “and it’s my impression that we shall find the remains of women and children in the farthest one. We shall hit upon the scene of a terrible massacre—the destruction of the race who built-up this place.”
The boys had joined the speakers now, just in time to hear Wilton speak—
“But I say, Lee, aren’t you letting your imagination carry you a little too far?”