“You stay here,” said Ike. “I’ll crawl.”
“Look out, lad; let me test the air. You do not know what you are doing.”
The detective drew a candle from his pocket, lit it and thrust it in the opening. Ike watched, and after a moment said:
“It’s all right,” and commenced to crawl in.
The detective drew his pistol and stood guard at the opening, and he was compelled to hold his hound by main force, for the animal sought to crawl in after Ike, and the latter fact established to a certainty that the prisoner was not far off.
Ike crawled along and finally came to an opening. He thrust his lamp forward, and a sight met his gaze that for an instant almost paralyzed him. There before him, stretched upon a clammy bottom in a mess of straw, lay the body of a man, and Ike decided that it was upon a dead body he was gazing and cold chills ran through his heart as he muttered:
“The scoundrels have murdered him and hidden his body here.”
Even as the lad spoke, however, the apparently dead man moved and Ike called out:
“Is that you, Alfred Burlein?”
A pale-faced man—so pale that he looked like a moving corpse—half rose and glanced toward the spot whence the voice came. Ike flashed the light in his face and recognized young Burlein, and called out: