WE FIND COLONEL DONALD
courage in my voice. "Have you got your nerve back, so as to go with me into that hole?"
He fumbled the lock of his gun, gazing doubtfully about, and down the tunnel where the rays of light penetrated a dozen feet; his teeth were set, his square jaw advanced.
"I'll go where ye ordher me, sor, but I niver hed a damneder job since I first wint sojerin'."
"All right, then: there's room for the two of us shoulder to shoulder. No matter what happens, don't fire until I give the word, and don't let shadows frighten you."
I held the lantern in my left hand, throwing the rays of light as far in advance as possible. With the other I drew a revolver from my belt, holding it cocked and ready. It was a perfectly straight passage, walls and roof of stone, smoothly matched. evidently thus arranged so any one could pass that way in the dark with no danger or injury. The floor was earth, but levelled as if by a transit, sufficiently hard to leave no impression of feet passing over it. It seemed to me the tunnel must run directly beneath the ell kitchen, and I doubted if the roof was two feet below the surface of the ground. This directness gave us confidence, as it permitted the rays of the lantern to penetrate a considerable distance, and, although alert and watchful, my thought drifted to the girl I had left locked in the room above. I wondered if it was possible for her to escape, to sound an alarm without, or even to close the opening fireplace, and thus securely trap us in this black hole underground. I felt
[ 229 ]
