anched olive
of his face was reflected in the pallid brows at the extremity of his
rigid arms. His voice, which had been lost in passion, found itself.

"And when your Indians come, Senor Don Roldan," he said, "they will
find three skeletons six feet beneath the floor of this cave. You will
never leave this cave, not one of you. When you are dead for want of
food and drink, I shall return and bury you. And no one will seek you
here." Suddenly he dashed them to the ground. "A thousand curses go
with you," he shrieked, "to make a murderer of me. I was near enough to
hell before--"

"And our fingers will scratch the ground beneath your feet,"
interrupted Roldan, who between mortification and rage felt equal
himself to murder, but determined as ever to hold his own. "Our skulls
will grin at you from every corner as you work--"

"I don't care!" shouted the priest. "I don't care! Here you rot. This
gold is mine. No man shall touch it but myself."

"But if we promise never to return, and to tell no man of what we
know," interposed Rafael, feebly.

The priest laughed. "With the glitter of gold in your brains? You could
not keep an oath on the cross." He turned swiftly and strode down the
passage.

"What will he do?" gasped Adan.

"Roll a stone over the entrance and secure it with others," said
Roldan. "There are plenty nigh. If we follow, he will beat us back with
those fists, and one blow would crack our skulls in two."

"Then what shall we do? Rot here? Starve to death? Madre de dios!"

"We have been between the teeth of death before, have we not? We shall
have many more adventures, my friends."

But although he spoke confidently he was profoundly disturbed. This was
no ordinary predicament. He knew that unless the priest relented they
stood small chance of seeing sun and stars again. Would he relent?
Roldan's own indomitable will and growing ambitions responded to the
awful forces in the man, overgrown and abnormal as they had become.
That the priest had some great end in view to which this gold was the
means, and that the gold itself had roused in him a controlling
passion, he could not doubt. The priest himself had told him something,
the gold the rest. With a sudden impulse of hatred Roldan emptied his
pockets of the metal and stamped upon it. He quieted suddenly, then
stamped again, with added vigour. Then he dropped and laid his ear to
the ground.

"Stamp, Adan," he said, "and hard."

Adan shook his bloo