The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind. "This cave--I've never seen a cave just like this. Virginia----" The man stepped forward and scratched a match on the stone. It flared; the shadows raced away. Then Bill's breath caught in a half-sob. Instantly he smothered the match. The darkness dropped around them like a curtain. But in that instant of light Bill beheld a scene that tore at his heart. Against the cavern wall, lost in the irremediable darkness, he had seen a strange, white shape--a ghostly thing that lay still and caught the match's gleam--a grim relic of dead years. He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke. "You'd better go out, Virginia--into the light," he advised. "Why? Is it--_danger?_" "Not danger." His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her. "Only wickedness. But it isn't anything you'd like to see." The single match-flare had revealed him the truth. For one little fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years ago,--a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair. But the shape of the cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the story plainly. The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine. Bill had found his father's sepulcher at last! * * * * * For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom. He understood, now, why his previous search had never revealed the mine. He had supposed that his father had operated along some stream, washing the gold from its gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft. In all probability, considering the richness of their content, they had burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out. He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern. The snowslide of some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck down the trees they had blazed, and covered the ashes of their own camp fires. The girl's voice in the darkness called him from his musings. "I believe I understand," she said. "You've found your mine--and your father's body." "Yes. Just a skeleton." "I'm not afraid. Do you want me to stay?" "I'd love to have you, if you will. Some way--it takes away a lot of my bitterness--to have you here." It was true. It seemed wholly fitting that she should be with him as he explored the cavern. It was almost as if the tragedy of his father's death concerned her, too. "I can hold matches," she told him. She came up close, and for a moment her hand, groping, closed on his,--a soft, dear pressure that spoke more than any words. When it was released he lighted another match.