“I toted mighty nigh all of 'em from higher up,” Pole explained. “Some o' the biggest I rolled down from that cliff above.” “I don't see how you are going to get into your hole in the ground,” said Craig, with a laugh of pleasant anticipation. Pole picked up a big, smooth stick of hickory, shaped like a crowbar, and thrust the end of it under the largest rock. “Huh! I 'll show you in a jiffy.” It was an enormous stone weighing over three hundred pounds; but with his strong lever and knotted muscles the ex-moonshiner managed to slide it slowly to the right, disclosing a black hole about two feet square in the ragged stone. From this protruded into the light the ends of a crude ladder leading down about twenty-five feet to the bottom of the cave. “Ugh!” Craig shuddered, as he peered into the dank blackness. “You don't mean that we are to go down there?” It was a crisis. Craig seemed to be swayed between two impulses--a desire to penetrate farther and an almost controlling premonition of coming danger. Pole met the situation with his usual originality and continued subtlety of procedure. With his big feet dangling in the hole he threw himself back and gave vent to a hearty, prolonged laugh that went ringing and echoing about among the cliffs and chasms. “I 'lowed this ud make yore flesh crawl,” he said. “Looks like the openin' to the bad place, don't it?” “It certainly does,” said Craig, somewhat reassured by Pole's levity. “Why, it _ain' t_ more 'n forty feet square,” said Pole. “Wait till I run down an' make a light. I've got some fat pine torches down at the foot o' the ladder.” “Well, I believe I _will_ let you go first,” said Craig, with an uneasy little laugh. Pole went down the ladder, recklessly thumping his heels on the rungs. He was lost to sight from above, but in a moment Craig heard him strike a match, and saw the red, growing flame of a sputtering torch from which twisted a rope of smoke. When it was well ablaze, Pole called up the ladder: “Come on, now, an' watch whar you put yore feet. This end o' the ladder is solid as the rock o' Gibralty.” The square of daylight above was cut off, and in a moment the ex-banker stood beside his guide. “Now come down this way,” said Pole, and with the torch held high he led the way into a part of the chamber where the rock overhead sloped, down lower. Here lay some old whiskey-barrels, two or three lager-beer kegs, and the iron hoops of several barrels that had been burned. There were several one-gallon jugs with corn-cob stoppers. Pole swept his hand over them with a laugh. “If you was a drinkin' man, I could treat you to a thimbleful or two left in them jugs,” he said, almost apologetically. “But I don't drink, Baker,” Craig said. His premonition of danger seemed to have returned to him, and to be driven in by the dank coolness of the cavern, the evidence of past outlawry around him.