For this dreamer, this bereaved man, this scornful philosopher of riches had disappeared with that midnight trespass upon the sacred treasure.

The movement of the blanket ceased; the soft, swishing sound recommenced.

He drew a glittering bowie-knife from his boot-leg, and in three noiseless strides was beside the pile.

There he saw what he fully expected to see,--a narrow, horizontal gap between the log walls of the cabin and the adobe floor, slowly widening and deepening by the burrowing of unseen hands from without.

The cold outer air which he had felt before was now plainly flowing into the heated cabin through the opening.