HOW long it was before I regained consciousness I do not know. I seemed to hear a sort of droning sound, like the faraway purr of an aeroplane motor. For a stupefied instant I believed I was again in my sleeping bag, awakening from a bad dream. Then the recollection of the hollow rock and my silent capture by strong hands seizing me swiftly from behind, the thundering hoofs of the frightened horse, came over me with sickening vividness. Cautiously I moved my arms and legs, and found that they were not bound. Neither was there a gag in my mouth or a bandage over my eyes. It was too dark to see anything of my surroundings, but I could feel that I was lying on a gently sloping, smooth, cold stone floor. I got unsteadily to my feet and carefully extended my hands above my head. Though I reached upward as far as I could, I could touch nothing. I got down on my knees and groped around, crawling several feet in every direction, and encountered no obstacle of any kind--only the smooth, dry stone that was the floor of my strange prison. There was no way of telling the dimensions of the room or cave in which I had been deserted by my mysterious captors. Utter darkness enveloped me like a heavy blanket. After several minutes of futile crawling around, I realized that I must be in the middle of some tremendous room, and that it was a waste of time trying to find a wall or outlet. My captors evidently knew that this Stygian blackness would effectually bar my escape, even if there were a way out, and that was undoubtedly the reason I was unbound. Nothing I could do would help in any way, so I might just as well await developments calmly. I stretched myself full length on the stone floor and tried to puzzle out the reason for my terrible predicament. That I had been kidnapped by bandits and removed to some cavern to await the payment of ransom seemed the most plausible solution. I wondered if they had seized Olin Gilfillan also. If so, why were we not together? Thinking he might be somewhere nearby, I shouted his name aloud. Only the hollow, booming echo of my own voice, sounding with eerie mockery from round about, answered me. I listened intently. Silence, a great, brooding silence, intensified by the darkness, by the magnitude of the cavern, and by my own breathing. I no longer heard the droning sound that I had noticed when I first regained my senses, so it must either have been my imagination or the effects of the drug I had been forced to inhale. Undoubtedly I was entirely alone in the darkness. And if I were being held for ransom, it would, be only a question of time before my captors brought me something to eat and drink.