Night came down suddenly, but the man in front lighted a small lantern that he took from under his serape, and they continued the march with unabated speed.  The forest thinned, and about nine o’clock they came into an open space.  The moon was now out and Ned saw a group of four rectangular buildings, elevated on mounds.  The buildings, besides being rectangles themselves, were so placed that the group made a rectangle.  The structures of stone were partly ruined, and of great age.  They followed the uniform plan of those vast and mysterious ruins found so often in Southern and Central Mexico.  The same race that erected the pyramids on the Teotihuacan might have raised these buildings.

“My home!  The quarters of myself and my men,” said Carossa, dramatically, pointing to the largest of the buildings.  “We do not know who built it.  It goes far beyond the time of Cortez, but it serves us now.  The peon will not approach it, because Carossa is there and maybe ghosts too.”

“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” said Obed White.  “Lead on, most noble captain.  We appreciate your hospitality.  We did not know that you were taking us to a palace.”

Captain Carossa deigned to be pleased again with himself, and, taking the lantern from the man in the red serape, he led the way.  He entered the large building by means of a narrow passageway in one of the angles, passed through an unroofed room, and then came to a door at which both Ned and Obed gazed with the most intense curiosity.  The doorway was made of only three stones, two huge monolithic door jambs, each seven feet high, nearly as wide and more than two feet thick.  Upon them rested a lintel also monolithic, but at least twenty feet in length, with a width of five feet and a thickness of three feet.  It was evident to Ned that mighty workmen had once toiled here.

“Is not that an entrance fit for a king?” said the brigand captain, again making a dramatic gesture.

“It is fit for Captain Juan Carossa, which is more,” said Obed White with suave courtesy.

Captain Carossa bowed.  Once more he deigned to be pleased with himself.  Then he led through the doorway and Ned uttered a little cry of admiration.  They stood in a great room with a magnificent row of monolithic pillars running down the center.  A stone roof had once covered the room, but it had long since fallen in.  The interior of the walls was plain, made of stones and mortar, once covered with cement, deep blood red in color, of which a few fragments remained.  But the walls on the outside were covered with splendid panels of mosaic work varied now and then by sculptured stones.  The stone used on the outside was of a light cream color.  But the boy did not see the mosaic panels until later.

Silent and studious, these vast ruins of a mysterious race made a great appeal to Ned.  He forgot the rough brigands for a moment, and stood there looking at the walls and great columns, upon which the moon was pouring a flood of beams.  What were these outlaws to those mighty builders whom the past had swallowed up so completely?