The brothers each drew a stool up by the side of this strange table, and Leander invited Darke cordially to do the same.
After he had partaken of the food so hospitably proffered by his new-found friends, he announced his intention to depart at once for home. The big hunter told him that it was already growing dark outside, and he knew that he must have been away from Vinnie at least five hours, now; and he feared that she would grow uneasy if he did not return soon.
He thanked the twin avengers for their kindness and was about to go, when he saw Alonphilus raise one end of the chest as if to carry it to some other part of the cavern. He stood close at hand, and he laid hold of the other handle to assist the dwarf in its removal.
They had gone but a few paces, however, when Alonphilus tripped and fell, dropping his part of the burden to the ground; and the sudden jar caused the other handle to slip from Darke’s grasp. The chest overturned, the cover flying back as it did so, and its contents rolled out at the woodman’s feet with a weird, ghastly rattle as it struck the rocky floor. Darke, strong, brave man though he was, started back with a quick, sharp cry of alarm.
White and terrible at his feet, lay a grinning, horrible skeleton of gigantic proportions!
“Our secret! Our secret!” cried the big hunter, hoarsely. “You hev diskivered our secret!”
CHAPTER IX.
LOST IN THE FOREST.
Still crouching down by the great tree-trunk at the entrance of the cavern lodge of the Maybob twins, in whose care her father, of whom the reader recollects she came out in search, was at that very moment, though she knew it not, and had no knowledge of the cave itself, Vinnie watched, as best she might, through the blinding storm, the approach of the rider of the white horse and his mysterious burden. Death, desisting for a moment from his persistent pawing of the earth at the base of the rock that had defied the girl’s weak attempts at removal a few minutes before, came, and standing close beside her, poked his sharp nose out through the bushes that grew thick around the foot of the tree, and watched with his keen eyes the horseman, who was coming nearer every moment.
She could not see the man’s face very distinctly, for he wore a wide, slouch hat that, when he bent far forward on his horse, to prevent the sleet from beating into his eyes and mouth, almost entirely concealed it from view.
But the mysterious burden that he carried before him was plainly visible, and seemed, perhaps because of its very mystery, to have a sort of weird fascination for her.