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“Now, señor, I think that we shall have to go back. You remember the writing tells us that this mine, although so rich, was unsafe because of the rottenness of the rock. Doubtless they propped it in the old days, but the timbers have decayed long ago.”

“Yes,” he answered, “we can do nothing here without help, and, Ignatio, I don’t like the look of the roof, it is full of cracks.”

As these last words left his lips a piece of stone, the size of a child’s head, fell from above almost at his feet.

“Speak softly,” I whispered, “the ring of your voice is bringing down the roof.”

Then I stooped to pick up the fallen stone, thinking that it might show ore, and, as I did so, my hand touched something sharp, which I lifted and held to the candle. It was the jawbone of a man, yellow with age, and corroded by damp. I showed it to the señor, and, kneeling down, we examined the bed of the tunnel together, and not uselessly, for there we found the remainder of the skull and some fragments of an arm-bone, but the rest of the skeleton lay under the great boulder in front of us.