"A traitor may meet his death by rope, bullet, or knife. He deserves to suffer by each separate means," said the leader with a significant glance rather at Steve than at the prisoner. "See that the prisoner is safely bound." At his command Steve stepped forward and closely examined the cords with which Milt's ankles and wrists were bound. His hands were tied behind him, and with his feet in the shadow the watcher on the rocky ledge above had not noticed until this moment how utterly helpless he was. Once more she grasped the pistol with a determined grip, and breathlessly looked down on the group beneath her. A crisis was surely approaching. The captain gave a brief command. Two of his henchmen--men as unscrupulous and callous as he--began to remove some flat stones that were laid on a pile of cedar logs near the rocky sides of the quarry just beyond the prisoner. This spot was partly in the shadow, and Sally had not noticed it until her attention was directed thither. She leaned forward cautiously, and looked down in wonder and perplexity while the stones were lifted off, then two of the logs were shifted to one side, while a dark, irregular opening was revealed in the rock floor, as if the mouth of a small cave had been uncovered. Indeed, such was the case, for on blasting away the rock, some years before, this aperture had been discovered, and as it was a dangerous opening, descending far downward into the very heart of the hill, it had been closed by means of the cedar logs, and the large flat stones laid on top of them. As the logs were lifted to one side, a member of the band standing near, dropped a loose stone into the opening, while the girl anxiously listening, quickly caught her breath as she heard the object falling down and down, striking against the uneven sides of the pit in its descent until it seemed to have penetrated the very bowels of the earth. The man who had dropped the stone shuddered and turned away. "The devil take me! if I believe that hole has any bottom to it," he said in an awed voice, and quickly the thought flashed into Sally's brain as to the purpose for which the pit had been uncovered, and why the abandoned quarry had been selected for a meeting-place this night. Was a human body to be sacrificed to the fearsome depths of that dark cavern? The thought appalled her more than all else that had gone before, and she grew faint with terror. Even the prisoner seemed to look in speechless horror toward the black opening as if he, also, guessed the peril that threatened him.