Brice held Simon Cameron gingerly, almost respectfully, standing so the huge eyes were able to gaze unimpeded at the gaping and shaking boy. Then, speaking very slowly, in a deep and reverent voice, he intoned: "Devil, look mighty close at that conch, yonder. Watch him, so's you'll always remember him! Put the voodoo on him, Devil. Haunt him waking, haunt him sleeping. Haunt him eating, haunt him drinking. Haunt him standing and sitting, haunt him lying and kneeling. Rot his bones and his flesh and--" A howl of panic terror from the youth interrupted the solemn incantation. The prisoner slumped to his knees in Standish's grasp, weeping and jabbering for mercy. Brice saw the time was ripe for speech and that the captive's stolid nerve was gone. Turning on him, he said, sternly: "If you'll speak up and answer us, truthfully, I'll make this ha'nt take off the curse. But if you lie, in one word, he'll know it and he'll tell me, and--and then I'll turn him loose on you. It's your one chance. Want it?" The youth fairly gabbled his eagerness to assent. "Good!" said Brice, still holding Simon Cameron, lest the supposed devil spoil everything by rubbing against the prisoner's legs and purring. "First of all:--how did you get in here?" The boy gulped. Gavin bent his own head toward the cat and seemed about to resume his incantation. With a galvanic jump, the youth made answer: "Came by the path. Watched till the dawg run out in the road to bark at suthin'. This man," with a jerk of his head toward his captor, "this man went to the road after him. I cut across the grass, yonder, and got in. They come back. I hid me in there." "H'm! Why didn't you come by way of the tunnel, like the other Caesars?" "Pop tol me not to. Sent me ahead. Said mebbe they moughtn't git in here if the doors was locked early. Tol' me to hide me in the house an' let 'em in, late, ef they-all couldn't git in no earlier, or ef they couldn't cotch one of the two cusses outside the house." "Good strategy!" approved Brice. "That explains why they haven't rushed us, Standish. They came here in force, and most likely (if they've gotten out of the enclosure, yet) they've surrounded the house, waiting for you or Hade to come in or go out. If that doesn't work, they plan to wait till you're asleep, and then get in, by this gallant youngster's help, and cut your throat at their leisure and loot the house and take a good leisurely hunt for the treasure. It calls for more sense than I thought they had .... How did they find the tunnel?" he continued, to the prisoner. "They been a-huntin' fer it, nigh onto one-half of a year," sulkily returned the boy. "Pop done found it, yest'dy. Stepped into it, he did, a walkin' past."