While the negro was procuring the light, Mason got his check, and they crossed the cavern, entered a narrow fissure in the wall, and vanished. The detectives glided from their place of concealment. Every word uttered had been heard by them. They entered the fissure. Some distance ahead was the light. It suddenly disappeared around a bend, and the officers observed, its dim rays illuminating a small chamber, as black as midnight. Reaching the end of the passage, the Bradys glanced through the big opening and saw a small cavern of the same crystal formation as the two other caves, excepting that everything here was black and dark brown from some chemical discoloration. It was a gloomy place. In the middle of the room was a huge rock. An iron ring was mortised in the side of it, to which a short, rusty chain was fastened. This chain held a human being a prisoner by being padlocked around his ankle. The man was Oliver Dalton. But the detectives scarcely recognized him. His face was pale and haggard, his eyes deeply sunken in their sockets, his hair dishevelled, and his face covered with a short beard. From privations his figure was so shrunken that his clothing hardly fit him, and the garments were so dirty and torn that he looked like a tramp. Mason and the negro had paused near him. The villain stood looking at the pitiful object he had so basely wronged with a cold, calculating glance, and finally said to him: "How are you feeling, Dalton?" "Oh, you miserable cur----" began the old broker, bitterly. "Shut up!" roared Mason, roughly interrupting him. "No raving!" "You'll kill me yet." "That makes little difference to me." "For mercy's sake give me some food; I'm starving." "Not till you obey me." "Have you no pity left in you?" "I'm simply determined to carry my point." "This is horrible--inhuman!" "Oh, I know very well it's unpleasant," testily answered Mason, "but you might have spared yourself all the suffering you have been undergoing for the past three days had you done as I asked. You know me, Dalton. I've started a desperate game to get your money, and I've been baffled at every turn by those accursed Bradys. This is my last resource to raise money enough to get out of the country, and, by Heavens, I'll win, or you'll die!" The broker gazed steadily at him a moment. In the hard, cruel expression of Mason's eyes he read his doom, and he was so overcome with absolute misery of mind and body that he leaned against the rock and cried like a child. All hope had left him. He was broken down in body and spirit. A cold, cynical smile hovered over Mason's face. He was not moved by the signs of weakness his prisoner showed. On the contrary, he gloated over it. This was the surest indication to him that Dalton was upon the verge of collapse, and intended to give in. He waited for his victim to get over the first paroxysm of grief, and watched him as closely as a cat watches a mouse.