The good woman knew that another expedition was on foot, for each boy carried a new tallow candle in hand, and wore his worst clothes, as if on purpose, while their pretty faces looked up at her, engagingly, as George, the youngest and boldest, acting as spokesman, asked: “Mis’ Gray, please, ma’am, may we explore the cave that opens from the hill in your back lot?” Smiling cheerily at them, she answered, kindly: “Bless your little hearts, there ain’t no cave there, children. My husband always told me ’twas the end of an underground passage from Wheatlands, where the Hermanns used to hide in Indian raids.” “We’d like to see it, all the same, ma’am, please,” said the blue-eyed boy with the little pug nose, in that sweet coaxing voice that always won its way with every one. At that she frankly gave consent, since she could see no possible danger in the adventure, but as she handed them out some currant buns for lunch she shook her head at them slyly, saying: “I wonder if your mas know you are out on this raid?” “Oh, they don’t care!” fibbed Willie, with a jaunty air, and then they all went around the house, disappearing presently in the hole under the hill, with their lighted candles, the four dearest and happiest little chaps in Christendom. “Bless their little hearts,” she sighed, wiping the quick tears from her eyes as she thought of her own two darlings at rest in the little green mounds over in the Presbyterian graveyard, under the grass and flowers, and as she knit and rocked the summer wind seemed like tender childish fingers playing with the locks of white hair on her wrinkled brow. So time slipped away for an hour or so, as she sat there in the summer stillness, lulled by the hum of bees and the song of birds, and the low breeze sighing in the pine trees, and then she started up at the sound of excited voices coming around the house. The four cave-hunters were returning helter-skelter, their faces pale, their eyes like saucers, all shouting at once: “Oh, Mis’ Gray, we have found a dead man!” “A dead man!” “A dead man!” “If you don’t believe us, come on, and we will show you!” It was no boyish joke, she could see from their pale, earnest little faces, so she said: “Oh, my, how dreadful! Some Indian bones, perhaps, my dears?” The boys, who had got in a close group together, now began to talk in loud whispers, one saying. “Oh, tell her!” another, “Oh, don’t,” while the something unexplainable in their faces made her tremble with a strange dread. She said as calmly as she could for the wild beating of her heart: “Out with it, boys; tell me all you know at once!” Thereupon Georgie shouted, glibly: “We went about five miles in the cave with our candles, an’ then we found”-- She held up a remonstrating hand, saying: “Not five miles, oh, no; I have often heard that the underground road isn’t more than a mile.”