ne of the wooden pillars and firmly grasped
his own legs above the knee. Moore climbed on the improvised ladder, and
was just able to seize the edge of the roof, as it seemed to be, with his
hands.

"Now steady, Peter," he exclaimed, and with a spring he drew himself up
till his head was above the level of the roof. Then he uttered a cry,
and, leaping from Peter's back retreated to the level where we stood in
some confusion.

"Good God!" he said, "what a sight!"

"What on earth is the matter?" I asked.

"Look for yourself, if you choose," said Moore, who was somewhat shaken,
and at the same time irritated and ashamed.

Grasping the lantern, I managed to get on to Peter's shoulders, and by a
considerable gymnastic effort to raise my head to the level of the ledge,
and at the same time to cast the light up and within.

The spectacle was sufficiently awful.

I was looking along a platform, on which ten skeletons were disposed at
full length, with the skulls still covered with long hair, and the
fleshless limbs glimmering white and stretching back into the darkness.

On the right hand, and crouching between a skeleton and the wall of the
chamber (what we had taken for a roof was the floor of a room raised on
pillars), I saw the form of a man. He was dressed in gay colours, and,
as he sat with his legs drawn up, his arms rested on his knees.

On the first beholding of a dreadful thing, our instinct forces us to
rush against it, as if to bring the horror to the test of touch. This
instinct wakened in me. For a moment I felt dazed, and then I continued
to stare involuntarily at the watcher of the dead. He had not stirred.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim and flickering light which the
lantern cast in that dark place.

"Hold on, Peter," I cried, and leaped down to the floor of the cave.

"It's all right, Moore," I said. "Don't you remember the picture in old
Lafitau's 'Moeurs des Sauvages Americains'? We are in a burying-place of
the Cherouines, and the seated man is only the kywash, 'which is an image
of woode keeping the deade.'"

"Ass that I am!" cried Moore. "I knew the cave led us from the Sachem's
Cave to the Sachem's Mound, and I forgot for a moment how the fellows
disposed of their dead. We must search the platform. Peter, make a
ladder again."

Moore mounted nimbly enough this time. I followed him.

The kywash had no more terrors for us, and we penetrated beyond the
fleshless dead into