Robert sprang to the Jew, dragged
him over on to his back, put his hand upon his breast and lifted his
eyelids.
"Dead," he said. "Stone dead. Privation, brain excitement, heart
failure--that's the story."
"Perhaps," answered Benita faintly; "but really I think that I begin to
believe in ghosts also. Look, I never noticed them before, and I didn't
walk there, but those footsteps seem to lead right up to him." Then she
turned too and fled.
Another week had gone by. The waggons were laden with a burden more
precious perhaps than waggons have often borne before. In one of them,
on a veritable bed of gold, slept Mr. Clifford, still very weak and
ill, but somewhat better than he had been, and with a good prospect
of recovery, at any rate for a while. They were to trek a little after
dawn, and already Robert and Benita were up and waiting. She touched his
arm and said to him:
"Come with me. I have a fancy to see that place once more, for the last
time."
So they climbed the hill and the steep steps in the topmost wall that
Meyer had blocked--re-opened now--and reaching the mouth of the cave,
lit the lamps which they had brought with them, and entered. There were
the fragments of the barricade that Benita had built with desperate
hands, there was the altar of sacrifice standing cold and grey as it had
stood for perhaps three thousand years.
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