fellowship.

Silence most oppressive had followed the patter of the myriad of rats'
feet, and it checked his efforts. They were brought to a termination
just when he looked forward with joy to a grey light dimly indicating
some aperture on the other side of which shone the day. The ground
seemed to give way under him, and he was hurled senseless into the pit
which he had not suspected.

When he returned to consciousness, the bell had ceased to toll; the
silence was once more heavy. But the pangs of hunger--remorseless master
over the young--spurred him into rising.

He was thankful that he had not been attacked in his helplessness by the
vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he
recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his
dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in
order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once
dark--contrary to all precedent--wore the appearance of Rebecca.

He could not see the light; but a current of warm air stealing steadily
into the underground indicated the orifice. It was a welcome draft, for
it differed in many features from the noisome, dank and earthy
exhalations to which he had luckily become accustomed in his indefinite
sojourn.

His surmise was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the
side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some
building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the
vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of the dead.