below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began
to think that the Indians had spoken no more than the simple truth in
warning me against such dangers, and that I had better turn again while
light remained to bring me back in safety; and just as I had reached
this wise conclusion my feet slid suddenly from under me on the very
edge of one of the ledges, and over I went into the depth below.

Fortunately I fell not more than a dozen feet or so, and my fall was
broken by a friendly bed of leaves and moss. When I got to my feet
again, in a moment, I found myself in a narrow cleft in the rocks, and I
was surprised to see that through this cleft ran a well-worn path. All
thought of the danger that I had just escaped from so narrowly was
banished form my mind instantly as I made this discovery; and full of
the exciting hope that I was about to find something which the Indians
most earnestly desired to conceal, I went rapidly and easily onward in
the direction that I had been pressing towards with so much difficulty
along the rocky mountain-side. The course of this sunken path, I soon
perceived, was partly natural and partly artificial. It went on through
clefts such as the one that I had fallen into, and through devious ways
where the fragments of fallen rock, some of them great masses weighing
many tons, had been piled upon each other in most natural confusion, so
as to leave a narrow passage in their depths. And all this had been done
in a long-past time, for the rocks were thickly coated with moss; and in
one place, where a watercourse crossed the path, were smoothed by water
in a way that only centuries could have accomplished. So cleverly was
the concealment effected, the way so narrow and so irregular, that I
verily believe an army might have scoured that mountain-side and never
found the path at all, save by such accident as had brought me into it.

For half a mile or more I went on in the waning light, my heart
throbbing with the excitement of it all, and so came out at last upon a
vast jutting promontory of rock that was thrust forth from the
mountain's face eastwardly. Here was an open space of an acre or more,
in the centre of which was a low, altar-like structure of stone. At the
end of the narrow path, being still within its shelter, I stopped to
make a careful survey of the ground before me; for I realized that in
what I was doing Death stood close at my elbow, and that, unless I acted
warily, he surely