It was a gruesome find under the circumstances. Laurence, his nerves unstrung by the effects of the drug, and recent alternations of exultation and what was akin to despair, felt his flesh creep. What did it mean? Why, that no way of escape did this valley of death afford. This former victim--had he been placed there in the same way as himself, and, all means of exit failing, had succumbed to starvation when his provisions were exhausted? It looked that way. Bending down, he examined this sorry relic of humanity--examined it long and carefully. No bone was broken, the skeleton was almost complete; where it was not, the joints had fallen asunder without wrench, and the smooth round cranium showed not the slightest sign of abrasion or blow. With sinking heart he pursued his search; yet somehow his attention now was given but languidly to potential means of exit which the faces of the cliffs might afford. Something seemed irresistibly to draw it to the ground. Ha! that was it. Again that horrid gleam of whitened bones. Another skeleton lay before him--and look, another, and another, at short distances apart. All these, like the first, were unshattered, uninjured; but--the whole area here was strewn with skulls, yellow and brown with age,--was strewn with bones also, mossy, mahogany-hued, and which crackled under his tread. No one could be more ruthless, more callous; no man could view scenes of cruelty and bloodshed more unmoved than Laurence Stanninghame,--as we have shown,--or bear his part more coolly and effectively in the fiercest conflict; yet there was something in these silent human relics lying there bloodless; in the unnatural, haunted silence of this dreadful death-valley that caused his flesh to creep. Then he noticed that all were lying along the slope of a ridge which ran right across the hollow, dividing the floor of the same into two sections. He must needs go over that ridge to complete his explorations, yet now he shrank from it with awe and repugnance which in any other man he would have defined as little short of terror. What would await him on the other side? Well, he must go through with it. Probably he would find more of such ghastly relics--that was all. But as he stood upon the apex of the ridge, with pulses somewhat quickened, no whitening bones met his gaze--fixed, dilated as that gaze was. The cliff in front--he thought to descry some faint chance of escape there, for its face was terraced and sloping backward somewhat. Moreover, it was rent by crannies and crevices, which, to a desperate and determined man, might afford hand and foothold.