So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he was almost up to them. But both of them would have paused in wonder if they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips. His lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew and harshened his features. "You've found a mine?" he asked. Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune. "We've found his father's mine--the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping. But there's a dreadful side of it too." "Show me where it is. I want to see it. Take me into it, Virginia--right away----" Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why. It was an instinct too deeply buried for him to trace. But he tried to force it down. There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine. Already, Virginia was pointing out the way. "You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear. "You were the one with him when he found it." "I can--but I won't," she replied coldly. "He asked me to go with him. The thought's unworthy of you, Harold." But he was in no mood to be humbled by her disapproval. Curiously, he was intensely excited. He mushed away toward the cavern mouth. Two minutes later he stood in the darkness of the funnel, fumbling for a match. "Gold, gold, gold," he whispered. "Heaps and heaps of it--what I've always hunted. And Bill had to find it. That devil had to walk right into it." He was sickened by the thought that except for his own cowardice he would have accompanied them into the den. At least he should have done that much, he told himself, to atone for his conduct during the bear's charge. Then he would have been in a position to claim half the mine--and get it too. Dark thoughts, curiously engrossing and lustful, thronged his mind. He found a match at least and it flared in the darkness. And the white skeleton lay just at his feet. He drew back, startled, but instantly recognized his poise. He knelt with unexplicable intentness. He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim connection with the rusted pick. And he bent, slowly, like a man who is trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick in his arms. His fingers seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his gold. Some way, his grasp seemed caressing. Oh, it was easy to handle and lift! How naturally it swung in his arms! What a deadly blow the cruel point could inflict! Just one little tap had been needed. Bronson had rocked and fallen, no longer to hold his share in the mine's gold. If there were an enemy before him now, one tap, and one alone was all that would be needed.