was left to the contemplation of my position without interruption.
I could but vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis, and my
only hope lay in that it might pass off as suddenly as it had fallen
upon me.

Late in the afternoon my horse, which had been standing with
dragging rein before the cave, started slowly down the trail,
evidently in search of food and water, and I was left alone with
my mysterious unknown companion and the dead body of my friend,
which lay just within my range of vision upon the ledge where I
had placed it in the early morning.

From then until possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of
the dead; then, suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon
my startled ears, and there came again from the black shadows the
sound of a moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves.
The shock to my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in
the extreme, and with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful
bonds. It was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves;
not muscular, for I could not move even so much as my little finger,
but none the less mighty for all that. And then something gave,
there was a momentary feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the
snapping of a steel wire, and I stood with my back against the wall
of the cave facing my unknown foe.

And then the moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my
own body as it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring
toward the open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground.
I looked first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave
and then down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay