"Who is he?" asked Jack, in an awed whisper, and then he started violently back, as something dark and uncanny whirred past his face,--for Jack was not without his superstitions, and the surroundings were certainly ghostly enough to impress the strongest heart. As he looked up, he fancied he saw two eyes gleaming at him out of the darkness; again there was a whir of wings past the lantern, and then he laughed aloud, for he saw his spectral visitor was only a bat. "What's th' matter?" queried Jed, looking up in surprise. "I don't see nothin' t' laugh at." "There's a lot o' bats up here," explained Jack, a little sheepishly. "I was jest gittin' ready t' run--I thought they was banshees. Do you know who th' pore feller is?" Jed struck a match and examined the dead man's face. "No, I don't know him," he said at last. "An' yet his face seems sort o' familiar, too. Why, yes; it's a feller who's been workin' around our stables. By gum! It's th' one thet druv th' wagon! We've been lookin' fer his corpse everywhere; an' when we didn't find it, we thought he was in cahoots with th' robbers an' had skipped out with 'em! Now how do you suppose he got here?" Jack, of course, could find no answer to the question, but stood staring stupidly down until Jed, by a mighty effort, rolled the box to one side, and passed the noose beneath the dead man's arms. "All right," Jed called. "I think you kin lift him--he ain't very heavy." And Jack slowly pulled the body up, hand over hand, the muscles he had acquired by long years of work on section standing him in good stead. Then, as the ghastly face, hanging limply back, came within the circle of light cast by his lantern, he saw it clearly, and in the shock it gave him almost let the body fall. "Good God!" he muttered. "Good God!" and stared down, fascinated, into the half-closed, lustreless eyes. For the dead man was Dan Nolan. Just how he had met death there at the bottom of that pit was never certainly known. Perhaps he had been sent down ahead to steady the chest in its descent and cast loose the ropes, and the chest had slipped or got beyond control of the men who were lowering it and crashed down upon him. Or perhaps he himself, helping to lower it, had lost his balance and fallen, only to be crushed by it as it, too, fell. His companions, terrified, no doubt, by the tragedy, had waited only to assure themselves that he was dead, and had then drawn up the ropes and fled. Some of those who knew the story of Nolan's treachery to the robbers, believed that it was not an accident at all, but that his companions had deliberately used this method of avenging themselves and getting rid of him, now that his usefulness to them was past. Whether by accident or design, certain it was that Nolan had met his end miserably at the very place where his captors had intended him to die.