The girls carried the idol into the little ante-room which was always a part of the burial grotto of an Aztec noble family. How pleasant, how cool, and damp it seemed in here, after their hot toil outside. The sisters had been in too many tombs to know any fear, to have any feeling of the presence of the dead. Their own breathing sounded loud and labored amid the silence of the cave. Dolores sat down on the moist floor, and examined the statues; she was thinking of the treasure; but Elsa, now that she was sure of finding the gold, or the jewels, or whatever the promise might have meant, desired to explore the grotto. From the little ante-room she passed into the larger chamber. Here, for the first time, she felt chilled; she seemed so alone. She was sure she felt a ghost whisper near her. Her feet slipped on the wet earth. On the further side of the tomb she saw upon the ground an urn, on which rested a skull. By the shape of the urn and by the arrangement of the ornaments above it Elsa knew that it contained the ashes of a warrior. A drop of water splashed down from the ceiling and aroused her. She held her torch aloft. She looked unbelievingly at the roof. Then she walked slowly around the room, wonderingly, feeling and scrutinizing the walls. "Dolores!" she called, "come quick!" Dolores was not long in coming. "And here is also what should be the source of untold wealth to the discoverer," Elsa was murmuring. "Dolores, do you see that green, that dull gray? How it shines? Don't you know, Dolores? It's jade, royal jade, Dolores!" --Dorothea Knoblock. II. The Society Story [What the society story is] Society stories are those non-consequential narratives of modern fashionable life which have in their very lightness their sole excuse for being. They are set up as only partial reflections of the actual. Since their chief purpose is to please, they have no studied realism in them. All things intense and unattractive are omitted. If trouble appears, it is but as "sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh," as one of their authors might promptly quote, and everything is brought to harmonize with everything else at last. Richard Harding Davis for his "Van Bibber" tales seems to have found a wide public. [The pastoral romance]