“It’s just as well I didn’t know you in the gloom. I’d have thought you dead and died myself. I was near-dead of nervousness already. Knowing you were armed, I feared when I heard the gun report that you had shot some one and been captured. I couldn’t have stayed here doing nothing much longer, despite my promise. Don’t know just what I’d have done, but——” “But that’s been decided for you,” he supplied, in an ecstasy over the confession back of her words. “You are here to un-hog-tie me. The key-knot is pressing the small of my back, or I don’t know the feel of one. See what you can do.” She leaned over him, her hands clasped over his helpless ones. “Only if you promise me,” she bargained with a vague, tender smile which he just could see, “that you won’t go back at them again. Otherwise you’re much safer tied—hog or human.” “I’ll promise anything if you’ll just lower those lips one half an inch. I think I can reach the rest of the way.” But she evidently decided to free him without the promise and trust to his discretion. Helping him turn over, she busied herself with his bonds. Long and strong as were her fingers, however, they made no impression upon this particular key-knot, tied to stay tied with some sailor-taught knack. “Feel in my coat pocket,” he suggested. “If they’ve left me a couple of matches——” She did. And they had. A stroke across his boot top lit one. The odor of burning hemp did not offend their nostrils; rather, was more grateful than the most subtle incense from the freedom promised in its fumes. After the fourth and last Lucifer had been burned to a char, the girl was able to fray and sunder the rest of the rope. The “key” turned, Pape made short work of the other knots, shook off his bonds and gained his feet. His first act of freedom was to seize and kiss the two taper-tipped, nail-broken, burnt-finger hands which had liberated him. “Sweet pardner!... Precious pal!” Pape always remembered his “grave” and the ensuing silence within its dank dark as the most cheerful place and the livest moment of his life. Only the moment, however, did he allow himself. “I’ve got to reward you by leaving you again, but not for long. Don’t bother promising this time. Just wait until I bring the real tenant of this tomb.” Samuel Allen, while seated upon a bowlder of trap-rock that divided the opening, watching the start of the delayed excavation, felt himself seized without warning from behind. Before he had time to utter more than a gasp he was dragged back into the cave. Perhaps pain from his injured shoulder made him speechless. Possibly surprise at the assault of the “scorpion,” just now unconscious and soundly trussed, had something to do with his inefficiency. He still seemed incapable of protest when the captive-turned-captor searched his coat pockets and extracted their contents.