Following one of these passages, Old Cy and Ray came to the ledge out of which the smoke was rising from a crevasse. It was a little lower than one in front, perhaps forty feet in breadth, double that in length, and of a more even surface. At each end was a short transverse passage hardly wide enough to walk in, and a few feet deep. And now, after a more careful examination of the crevasse out of which the thin film of smoke rose, Old Cy began a search. Up and down each narrow passway he peeped and peered, but nowhere was a crack or cranny to be found in their walls. In places they were as high as his head, sheer faces of slate, then broken, serrated, moss-coated, or of yellow, rusty color. Here and there a stunted spruce had taken root in some crack, and over, back from the topmost ledge, this green enclosure began and continued up the low mountain. Here, also, in a sunny nook below this belting tangle of scrub spruce, were ample signs of a trapper's occupation in the way of pelts stretched upon forked sticks and hanging from a cord crossing this niche. They were of the usual species found in this wilderness,--a dozen muskrat, with a few mink and otter skins and one lynx. Another sign of human presence was also noted, for here a log showing axe-marks, with split wood and chips all about, was seen. "Some o' them pelts is ourn," Old Cy ejaculated, glancing at the array, "an' I've a notion we'd best hook on to 'em. Mebbe not, though," he added a moment later, "it might git us into more trouble." But Ray was getting more and more uneasy each moment since they had landed there. It seemed to him a most dangerous exploit, and while Old Cy had hunted over this curious confusion of slate ledges and stared at the rising film of smoke, Ray had covertly watched the lake's outlet. "I don't think we'd better stay here much longer," he said at last. "We can't tell how soon that man may come back and catch us." "Guess you're right," Old Cy asserted tersely, and after one more look at the inch-wide crack out of which the smoke rose, he led the way to their canoe. "Thar's a cave thar, sure's a gun," he muttered, as they skirted the bold shore once more, "an' that smoke's comin' out on't. I wish I dared stay here a little longer 'n' hunt fer it." Old Cy was right, there was a cave there beneath the slate ledge--in fact, two caves; and in one, safe and secure, as its owner the notorious McGuire believed, were concealed the savings of his lifetime. More than that, so near do we often come to an important discovery and miss it, Old Cy had twice leaned against a slab of slate closing the entrance to this cave and access to a fortune, the heritage of Chip McGuire.