They stood at the mouth of the cavern wherein Willis and Ralph had been captured. A sentinel was posted at the entrance, who demanded the password from Dungarvon before he was allowed to pass with the supposed Black Bear, it being so dark by this time that the sentinel could not distinguish the features of the captain.
Passing along the narrow cavern a short way, the captain stopped and placed his hand in a small niche in the rocky wall. Immediately the wall seemed to part with a heavy, grating noise.
“This way, Brandon,” said the robber chief, and the two stepped through the aperture in the wall, into a small, but brilliantly-lighted chamber. Then the captain touched a small, projecting rock on the wall, when the two walls rolled together again, and there was no sign of the aperture through which they had passed.
“This,” said Dungarvon, turning to his companion, “is my private apartment, and you may now consider yourself, Black Bear, in the Lodge of Mountain Men, from which you will never go alive until you have been initiated into the brotherhood.”
CHAPTER XVII.
AN ADVENTURE IN THE DARK.
Ebony Jim had not remained in his concealment among the foliage more than a minute when he recognized the voice of his old friend, Flick O’Flynn, among the three whom he at first took for robbers, but who in fact were O’Flynn, Frank Armond and Walter Lyman.
Ebony was in the act of springing to the ground and making his presence known, when the Irishman’s remark—which caught the negro’s ears—of the place through which they were passing being so gloomy, and that he imagined he felt the icy fingers of the Old Nick upon him, suggested a practical joke to his mind. Waiting until the trio were directly under him, he thrust his hand down through the foliage, and seizing the loquacious O’Flynn by the neck, jerked him from the ground and up among the foliage with the quickness of thought.
Flick gave vent to a furious yell, and dropping his rifle drew his knife, supposing that he was in the hands of the Old Boy, sure enough. But what was his surprise, when, on turning to deal a deadly blow, he saw Ebony seated before him, his sable face convulsed with laughter.
“Faith, and mees hev a notion to give yees a dig wath this knife, so I hev; but niver mind, there’s a rheckoning coming, so there is.”