“Couldst thou bear to hear his voice?”
“I could, methinks.”
“Come, then, follow me, and we will do our best; thou shalt ask one question, and if he be in the mood he will answer.”
She took up a torch of pine, and lit it at the fire. “Follow,” she said, and drew aside the curtain; a dark passage seemed to lead into the very bowels of the earth.
It was one of those celebrated limestone caves of which so remarkable an example exists in the Cheddar valley; the water which oozed through the rifts had a strange petrifying power, and objects upon which it fell were in due time either incrusted with stone or actually petrified.
From the roof descended long spars of stone in shape like icicles; fantastic resemblances of various objects met the gaze; here were shrouds and winding sheets, there delicate tracery like lace; here hung graceful curtains, and there were grotesque caricatures of animal life, but all in cold stone. The height of the passage varied; once Sir John had to follow his haggard guide on hands and knees, but onward they crawled or walked, deeper and deeper beneath the bowels of the earth, until they reached a dark cave, which seemed to be hung round with funereal trappings of black stone; in the centre was a sombre pool, into which heavy drops of water from above kept falling with a monotonous splash.[49]
The hag renewed some half obliterated marks with chalk, which represented a circle inscribed in a pentagon, and motioned Sir John to stand beside her within its protection,—“Not a foot or hand outside,” she said earnestly; then she repeated some mystic words in an unknown tongue; a mephytic vapour arose, the pool boiled like a geyser, the cave appeared to tremble, and a deep voice said—
“Why hast thou brought me up?”
“Ask thy question at once,” whispered the witch.
“Where may I meet my foes?” said Sir John.