The Voodoo Gold Trail. Walden Walter

      The black doubled up on the floor without a sound. I rushed a chair under the secret portal, and in two moments was back in the dark passage, the door with its peg back in place.

      I put my eyes to the chink. In a minute Duran appeared. That he was all in a knot – dumfounded at the thing he saw, was plain.

      I was curious to know whether I had committed manslaughter, but when Duran opened the door and began to call out to others, I thought it wise to move. I used my light, and went back the way I had come. There showed nothing but bare stone walls; the passage, between four and five feet wide, and not twice so high.

      Presently it descended, in steps; at the bottom my light showed a door. I lifted a long, rusty latch, and with repeated strong pulls, swung it open. There was a hole through, ostensibly to permit of reaching the latch with a stick from the outside.

      The welcome outdoor air came through a heavy growth of vines. It was perhaps fifteen feet to the ground. I swung the door to after me, and scrambled down by the vines.

      Ah, how good that bit of turf felt under my feet! Trees were all about, though just here they were new growth – small. A stream trickled over stones close by. I went down to its edge and drank my fill, and I took the brook for my guide, upward, toward the hills.

      I came to a place where I must walk in the water to go round a low cliff. And then I came upon a path, new used, and seeming to come from that great building whose upper walls I could still see peeping through the tree-tops.

      I heard voices, and jumped behind a bushy screen. There appeared on the path a half dozen black men, and an old black crone. Two pairs of the men were burdened with litters, and two went before as an advance guard – they were armed with guns. On the litter were bundles, some in gunny sacks, and some tied in blankets. I was sure I saw some movement in the bundle on one litter, as of some living thing there. My heart thumped with the thought that here were some little ones being transported for voodoo slaughter. And my reason told me that little Marie Cambon was of the number.