They push on, and presently the foremost, Ladds, starts back with a cry.
"What is it?" asks Colquhoun.
They push aside the brambles, and behold a skeleton. The body has been on its knees, but now only the bones are left. They are clothed in the garb of the celestial, and one side of the skull is broken in, as if with a shot.
"It must be my old friend Achow," said Colquhoun calmly. "See, he's been murdered."
In the dead of night Ladds awakened Colquhoun.
"Can't help it," he said; "very sorry. Ghosts walking about the stairs. Says the ghost of Achow to the shade Leeching, 'No your piecy pidgin makee shootee me.' Don't like ghosts, Colquhoun."
Next morning they left Empire City. Ladds was firm in the conviction that he had heard and seen a Chinaman's ghost, and was resolute against stopping another night in the place.
Just outside the town they made another discovery.
"Good Lord!" cried Ladds, frightened out of sobriety of speech. "It rains skeletons. Look there; he's beckoning!"
And, to be sure, before them was raised, with finger as of invitation, a skeleton hand.