"I--I," stammered Bud, "I forgot the dead miner. We were too late to save him; but he lived long enough to tell us--" He stopped abruptly and glanced swiftly around the room. The secret of the Cave of Gold must not be proclaimed from the housetops! There was no one in the room with himself, but the two women and the two girls. "Mother, Mrs. Conroyal," he continued, lowering his voice, "the old miner before he died told Thure and me of a wonderful Cave of Gold that he had discovered in a gulch somewhere in the mountains; and he made Thure and me his heirs, and gave us a map, showing the way to the cave, and a huge gold nugget, which the robbers did not get, that he said he had found in the cave, and he--But here is Thure! He has the--" "Hush! Not so loud!" and Thure, who at that moment stepped into the room from the sala, where the body of the dead miner lay, lifted a warning hand. "There are many ears in there," and he pointed to the door he had just closed behind him, "that must not hear what we have to tell. Come, let us go to your room, mother, where there won't be any danger of what we have to tell you being overheard," and he started for Mrs. Conroyal's private room, followed by Bud and the two wondering women and the girls. "I--I," and Thure stopped at the door of his mother's room and looked hesitatingly at Iola and Ruth, "I--I reckon it is too great a secret to tell you two girls just now. You had better wait--" "No!"--"No!" broke in both girls indignantly, while Ruth, looking as if she would like to box Thure's ears, declared: "We girls can keep a secret just as well as you boys can, and you know it; for, haven't we saved you from many a licking by not telling your dads what you had been up to? But if this is the way you are going to treat us, we'll fix you next time," and she shook her head threateningly. "Besides," supplemented Iola triumphantly, "we know most of the secret already. It's about a Cave of Gold and a map and--" "Oh, Christmas! You couldn't keep nothing from the girls!" and the face Thure turned to Bud showed his disgust. "Well, I reckon the secret is just as safe with them as it is with us," protested Bud stoutly, flushing a little, "especially when they know how important it is to keep it secret. You will never tell a word of it to anybody, will you girls? It--it might mean murder, if you did." "No, no," affirmed Iola emphatically. "We'll not breathe a word of it to a living human being. We'll die first. We'll not disappoint your trust in us, Bud," and she glanced a bit scornfully from Bud to her brother. "Will we, Ruth?" "Never," and Ruth's red lips closed tightly over her pearly teeth. "Do you suppose we'd betray those we love?" and her eyes flashed indignantly.