At least, that was his idea when he settled himself in the recess. As a matter of fact not even his aching foot could keep him awake. He dropped almost at once into the deep dreamless sleep of exhaustion. When he opened his eyes it was to see the sunlight slanting into the cave--a circumstance which at first convinced him that it must be nearly noon, since the cave opening faced the south and the cañon walls were high. After a brief space of mental fogginess, however, his mind snapped into alertness. He remembered that he had stooped to enter the cavern; the sunlight bathed the high-arched roof just over his head and brought into relief certain symbols--left there by the ancients, he had no doubt. For a time he lay looking up at the roof, deciphering each crude character, his eyes tracing the lines which even in that sheltered place showed the erosion of many centuries. Some of the lines were dimmed; none retained the sharp outlines left by the engravers. Now he knew that the cave had a high opening through which the sun was shining; a common occurrence in that old formation that had suffered the buffetings of wind and water for millions of years, and moreover had been rocked and twisted by many a primeval earthquake. He thought no more of the opening, but insensibly slipped under the spell of those ancient records, his imagination thrilling to each new sign as it caught his eye. The story of a journey was depicted there, a journey of death, he judged from certain priestly emblems and the sign of burial. Perhaps they had attempted to depict the journey of the soul, though he could only guess at that, his speculations revolving around a figure of a dog or wolf, very similar to the jackal which in the belief of ancient Egypt was supposed to carry souls across the desert to paradise. He wondered, searching farther along the roof for further inscriptions. Like an old rangeman riding up to a herd of strange cattle, unconsciously reading the brands and mentally identifying the owners, Abington could not seem to pull his mind away from that roof. Beyond the sunlit patch the carvings extended into obscurity so deep that, stare as he would, he could not distinguish the lines. A sense of bafflement nagged at him. Just as the cattleman will follow a range animal for half a mile, seeking the vague satisfaction of seeing what brand had been burned into its hide, Abington sat up and put on his boots, and picked up the can of carbide and miner’s lamp which he used in preference to candles when exploring dark caverns. He started climbing up a tilted shelf of rock that offered a precarious footing for a man tall enough to bridge certain places where the shelf had dropped completely away and left gaps in what may once have been a steep narrow trail.