night, discovered in its darkest corner a moss-covered stone behind
which had accumulated a great quantity of weeds, ivy, and loose
rubbish. Boylike, he fell to clearing away these impedimenta and
excavating the stone, until, after some industrious labour thus
expended, he dismantled behind and a little above it a narrow passage,
into which he crept, partly to satisfy his love of "exploring,"
partly in the hope that it might afford him an egress in the direction
of the village. The aperture thus exposed had not, in fact, escaped
the eye of St. Aubyn, when about an hour afterwards the search for
the lost boy was renewed. But one of his guides, after a brief
inspection, declared the recess into which it opened empty, and
the party, satisfied with his report, left the spot, little thinking
that all their labor had been lost by a too hasty examination.
For, in fact, this narrow and apparently limited passage gradually
widened in its darkest part, and, as little St Aubyn found, became
by degrees a tolerably roomy corridor, in which he could just manage
to walk upright, and into which light from the outer world penetrated
dimly through artificial fissures hollowed out at intervals in the
rocky wall. Delighted at this discovery, but chilled by the vaultlike
coldness of the place, the lad hastened back to fetch the fur mantle
he had left in the cave, threw it over his shoulders, and returned
to continue his exploration. The cavern gallery beguiled him with
ever-new wonders at every step. Here rose a subterranean spring,
there a rudely carved gargoyle grinned from the granite roof;
curious and intricate windings enticed his eager steps, while all
the time the deathlike and horrible silence which might have deterred
an ordinary child from further advance, failed of its effect upon
ears unable to distinguish between the living sounds of the outer
world and the stillness of a sepulchre.