ng, pioneer blood tingled; her heart gladdened with a glow of
discovery and exploration. Perhaps cave men had dwelt here, secure and
watchful, in the forgotten ages; the idea thrilled. Certainly no man
of her own time or her father's knew of the place: that thought made
the spot her own, and intensified her eager delight in finding it. It
had, to her sensitive, imaginative nature, an aura that she felt had
clung to it always. It was a bit of the wild, the retreat of the wild
things, sternly expressive of a savage grandeur.

Her sensations a strange composite of many dim, intangible,
inexpressible emotions, Wanda tiptoed to the opening, paused listening,
took two or three quick steps and was inside the cave. For a moment
she fully expected to see the sight she dreaded, a pair of gleaming
points of light blazing at her menacingly. And for a little she saw
nothing but shadowy, unreal shapes. Her heart leaped wildly as the
startling fancy came to her that these were the phantoms of the long
dead time when men had lived here, ghosts of the older race.

Then she laughed softly again, once more accused herself of being
"stupid," and began her explorations. Little by little as she grew
accustomed to the scant light here she made out dim bits of detail.
First she realised that her first conjecture had been quite right, and
that this was the biggest cave by far that she had ever seen. She
moved forward half a dozen steps, walking warily for fear of a fall and
found that the light from the entrance died into deep darkness before
it could search out the sides of the great cliff room. Then she went
back out upon the ledge and gathered from the debris choked fissure an
armful of broken bits of dry wood, twigs and needles from the cedar.
In the pocket of her blouse were the matches which she always carried
with her on her trips and in a moment a crackling flame near the cave
door shot its wavering light deep into the dark interior. Then again
she hurried in, eager to see what lay before her.

Nowhere was the rock roof lower than ten feet save where far back it
slanted toward the floor. The floor itself sloped so gently toward the
back that it seemed quite level. She judged at first glimpse, as the
firelight drew from the gloom a glinting granite surface here and
there, that the chamber was twenty feet wide, that it reached back into
the cliffs some fifty feet. She moved back toward what seemed the rear
wall, found the