ken such
pride, he had rather see it thus than restored to all its former glory,
but remaining in the shadow of the yellow banner of Spain.

Locating as nearly as might be that portion of the ruins beneath which
the tunnel had penetrated, Rene, and those with him, began a search of
the river-bank for its entrance. At length they discovered not a slab
of bark, such as had formerly covered the entrance, but a block of
stone, of such size that it required their united strength to remove
it. It was also of a color so closely resembling the surrounding soil
that, had they not been looking for some such thing, and been aware of
almost the exact spot in which to search, they would not have noticed
it.

The substitution of this slab of stone for the one of bark proved that
others had meddled with the passage since Rene last passed through it,
and also that these others were white men, probably Spaniards.
Nevertheless, though he greatly feared that the search would prove
fruitless, for those who had discovered the passage must also have
found its contents, Rene determined to keep on and explore it to the
end.

Lighting their way with torches, and with Rene in the lead, the party
entered the tunnel. De Gourges lamented that he had not known of its
existence sooner, in which case he would have used it as a mine, in
which to place powder and blow the walls of the fort about the ears of
the Spaniards.

When they reached the point at which Rene had left the books and
papers, they found that, even as he feared, they had been removed, so
that no trace of them remained. Rene bethought himself, however, of
the small iron box which he had buried in the earth at one side of the
tunnel. After thus burying it he had stopped the place again with
clay, and now he hoped that this box at least might have escaped
discovery. So they prodded the earthen wall of the tunnel for some
distance with their daggers, and at length the point of Rene's weapon
struck against metal. Here they dug, and directly he had recovered the
box much rusted, but still sound, in which he felt sure his uncle had
kept his most important papers.

While they had thus obtained all that they could now hope for in this
search, both Rene and De Gourges were anxious to explore the passage to
its extreme end, and so they continued on through it.

Of a sudden they found themselves in a place that had been so greatly
enlarged beyond the original limits of the tunnel