These facts Rees, who, armed with the miner’s lantern, entered first, ascertained after a very few minutes’ exploration. But at the bend the air grew so foul and heavy that he retreated, and again had recourse to his rope and his air tube. Thus equipped, he went on with his researches, and proceeding cautiously down the second incline, which was steep and exceedingly rough under the tread, he soon came to a third abrupt bend, after which the passage, now grown so much steeper that notches had been cut in the ground to help the passenger, turned again sharply in the opposite direction. When he had gone a few steps Rees stepped upon something, the sound of which set his heart beating violently and caused him to come to a dead stop. The incline was so abrupt that he had been walking with his head well back, feeling for each notch with careful feet. Stooping down he now saw that the ground was strewn with coins, grown dingy in the dust, but the reddish glitter of which, when he picked some up and rubbed them on his coat-sleeve, proclaimed them to be gold. It was true then--the story of the lost treasure was true! Rees climbed down the remaining steps, the nails in his boots clanking at almost every tread against more of the scattered coins. At last he was again on level ground. Stumbling against something, he heard the surging sound of a sea of gold pieces, and discovered at his feet a small clumsily fashioned chest, made of wood, covered with leather, and strengthened by metal bands. The lid was open, and the coins with which it had been filled were pouring from it. Rees scarcely noticed it. For, not a yard from where he stood, was the dead Lord Hugh of Thirsk, the wide cavalier cloak still hanging in dusty folds from his fleshless shoulders, the low-crowned hat, with its ragged shred of feather, still lying at his feet. Rees shuddered. This man, dying nobly in the execution of his desperate duty, reproached him--stung him with a half-acknowledged sense of a great difference. He stole closer, and by the lantern’s weak light examined the motionless figure. The face was grey and shrivelled, the dry lips had fallen apart, and the glassy eyes stared out of cavernous sockets. Yet Rees fancied he saw the remains of a noble and handsome countenance in the wreck death had made. The hair fell, dark and lank and powdered with dust, upon the shoulders. The withered hands still rigidly clasped the thighs, as if their owner had determined with resolute strength of will to wait for death quietly. The low seat on which his body rested was formed of two small chests, of similar shape and size to that one against which Rees had stumbled. Rough conjectures as to the events which had immediately preceded Lord Hugh’s death flashed through Rees Pennant’s mind as he made his way rapidly back to his companions, without disturbing by so much as a touch the solemn peace of the dead man.