it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so
dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling
into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because
it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in
time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that
he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock
was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had
trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted
match before him--these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers--and
having with him the full box of matches should further light be
required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it
came from we could not tell--for he had descended into the rock below
us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above.
While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below,
and then he came up the stair laughing.

"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests
who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they
knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an'
room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head
that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an'
that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really
believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with
a rig like that!"

But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply
interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a
way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we
might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and
so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the
city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting
out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our
deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole
circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great
expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly,
escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold
climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open
path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to
the edge of