m he approached the window and looked in. And
there he beheld a sight that froze him to the marrow. Two huge skeletons
were struggling in deadly embrace. He could hear no sound but the
click-click-click of their bones. He saw the gleam of knives held
between fleshless fingers, and he saw now that both were struggling for
the possession of something that was upon the table. Now one almost
reached it, now the other, but neither gained possession.

The clicking of the bones became louder, the struggle fiercer, the
knives of the skeleton combatants rose and fell. Then one staggered back
and sank in a heap on the floor.

For a moment the victor swayed, tottered to the table, and gripped the
mysterious object in its bony fingers.

As it stumbled weakly against the cabin wall the gruesome creature held
the object up, and Rod saw that it was a roll of birch-bark!

An ember in the dying fire snapped with a sound like the report of a
small pistol and Rod sat bolt upright, awake, staring, trembling. What a
horrible dream! He drew in his cramped legs and approached the fire on
his knees, holding his rifle in one hand while he piled on wood with the
other.

What a horrible dream!

He shuddered and ran his eyes around the impenetrable wall of blackness
that shut him in, the thought constantly flashing through his mind, what
a horrible dream--what a horrible dream!

He sat down again and watched the flames of his fire as they climbed
higher and higher. The light and the heat cheered him, and after a
little he allowed his mind to dwell upon the adventure of his slumber.
It had made him sweat. He took off his cap and found that the hair about
his forehead was damp.

All the different phases of a dream return to one singly when awake, and
it was with the suddenness of a shot that there came to Rod a
remembrance of the skeleton hand held aloft, clutching between its
gleaming fleshless fingers the roll of birch-bark. And with that memory
of his dream there came another--the skeleton in the cabin was clutching
a piece of birch-bark when they had buried it!

Could that crumpled bit of bark hold the secret of the lost mine?

Was it for the possession of that bark instead of the buckskin bag that
the men had fought and died?

As the minutes passed Rod forgot his loneliness, forgot his nervousness
and only thought of the possibilities of the new clue that had come to
him in a dream. Wabi and Mukoki had seen the bark clutched in the