"I'll wager a thousand dollars, gentlemen, that the Scotchman never was buried!"
"He was buried, certain," said Pearce; "I can show you the place."
"Then there is some strange mystery about it," said Abraham, somewhat disappointed. "This very day I found a man's skull, which I am now quite certain has some connection with this tragedy."
The intense excitement produced by this disclosure is quite indescribable. Every body in the party leaned forward, with starting eyes, and gazed with breathless interest at Abraham. He had purposely withheld making any reference to the affair of the skull till a fitting opportunity should occur to disclose all the particulars, when the mind of every individual present was in a proper tone of solemnity to receive so important a communication. That opportunity had how occurred, under the most favorable and unlooked-for circumstances. I never saw Abraham so excited in my life before—not even on the occasion of his late unpleasant difficulty.
"Gentlemen," said he, "I had a presentiment before we left the ship that this expedition would result in some extraordinary discovery. You may judge from the facts which I am about to disclose to you how far this presentiment has been verified."
He then, in a voice of becoming solemnity, went into a detailed narrative of our adventures in the mountains. He commenced at the very starting-point, where we separated from the hunting party; he dwelt vividly on our perilous adventure on the cliff, stating all the particulars of our escape; how we climbed up a perpendicular wall of rocks four thousand feet high; how we stood upon the very highest pinnacle, which was only ten inches in diameter; how, when we came down again to the base, we lay perfectly insensible for an entire hour; and the wonderful adventures we had in the interior—the walk of six miles directly back from the ocean; our preservation from a horrible and lingering death by thirst, through the agency of a little bird; the Enchanted Valley that we explored, and the two wild horses we caught entangled in the bushes, and afterward rode; our discovery of an old castle built in the sixteenth century by Juan Fernando; the mysterious marks upon the outer wall; our strange and startling explorations of the interior vaults and marble halls; and finally the discovery of the skull—the skull of some unfortunate man who had crept into one of those dreary vaults, where he died on a miserable bed of straw, all alone, without a soul near him! Afterward how he (Abraham) and myself were overtaken by a frightful tornado, and cast down over the rocks a distance of three miles in a direct line; how, during this terrible fall, he had the misfortune to strike a rock, and ruin the invaluable relic of mortality which he had put in his pocket, by breaking it all to pieces; but—
"Did you save the pieces?" asked a voice from the corner. Of course it was the voice of the Doubter. A look from Abraham silenced him, and the narrative was resumed:
But it fortunately happened that a portion of the socket of one eye and a piece of the forehead remained entire, which, together with all the smaller fragments, he would be most happy to exhibit to the company; premising, however, that there was but little question in his mind, from all the particulars of Pearce's tragical narrative, that this skull was in some way or other connected with it. Possibly it might be that the unhappy young woman, who it appears was the victim of an inordinate passion for the murdered man, bereft of her senses by his tragical death, went to his grave at night and dug up his body, and being unable to carry it away at once, perhaps she cut it to pieces, and carried it by degrees up to her secret place of wailing in the mountains, where she could mourn over his remains without fear of discovery. It was not an unreasonable conjecture, he thought, considering the woman was insane. In some hour of despondency she had probably made those mysterious designs which had led to the discovery—the sketch of the dead body of her lover; the ship that left the island without saving him; some pet goat that doubtless accompanied her in her wanderings; the children that were strangled, and all those vague marks, which indicated the character of her thoughts.
During the narration of these adventures, which I must confess astonished me not a little, well as I knew the enthusiastic character of my friend (and he never was more in earnest in his life), I observed that Pearce had doubled himself up almost into a knot, covering his face with his hands, and heaving convulsively, as if moved by some internal earthquake. There was no sound escaped him, but it was quite evident that he was strangely affected by Abraham's narrative. The rest of the party were so deeply interested in the whole disclosure that they took no notice of him. Could it be that Pearce himself was implicated in the murder? That it was all a fiction his being in Valparaiso at the time? That he was in any way attached to this unfortunate female, whose sad fate had aroused all our sympathies?
"I'd like to see that skull," said the Doubter.