He called on her at the West Point Hotel, where she boarded with her father, and found her sitting on the piazza.
“A real cave!” she cried, with a smile. “How romantic! Have you told——”
“Nobody but you,” said Mark. “It’s our secret. We may want to haze some yearlings there, you know. So not a word.”
“But you say it was furnished! How wonderful!”
“Yes,” said Mark, “even carpets. It seems that this place was once the den of a gang of counterfeiters. I see you open your eyes in surprise. We found all their dies and molds and everything.”
“But how do you know they aren’t there still?” inquired Grace Fuller in alarm.
“That is the grewsome part of the story. They are all dead. We found that the cave was divided by a heavy iron door. I went into the other part and the door slammed and shut me in. I was scared almost to death, far more than I was the day I swam out to help you. The rest of the fellows opened it at last, and I found that I was shut in with six skeletons. I don’t wonder you look horrified. Those criminals had been trapped accidentally in their own cave, just as I was, but they had been suffocated. And there they had lain, we found out afterward, for forty or fifty years.”
“It is perfectly terrible!” gasped the girl, her cheeks pale. “I don’t see how you will ever dare go into the place again.”
“It is a big temptation,” laughed Mark. “You see if the cadets continue to try unfair tactics in their efforts to haze us poor unfortunate plebes we can scare some of them into submission up there. And besides, our learned Boston friend, Parson Stanard, has gotten the gold fever. He vows he’s going on a treasure hunt in that cave.”
“A treasure hunt!”