“Oh! you are wise,” she cried, with a little triumphant laugh—a pretty confection of love and relief and tears. “You are wise and bold, but not a little stupid perhaps. Who shall say that another sentry is not posted between the lodge and the house? And now you are to see.”
She put her shapely foot against the door and pushed it open. She jumped into the jaws of Erebus, and held up her arms to him; and he let himself down into them, trusting, and was taken and rejoiced over.
“Now,” she said, “whatever comes we are safe to win clear, and I will cry a little. But I can cry walking.”
“And will you explain a little, Betty?”
“This is no ice-house; or at least it is only the mouth of an underground passage, that leads straight through into that you call the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“Betty!”
“I have heard grandfather (woe is me—the poor old man!) talk o’t many a time. For he worked here when a lad in the service of Sir Thomas Woodruff. And I doubted not your honour knew; though the end in truth was choked with rubbish. But when you returned not, and the rogues came in force and made their purpose clear, we women watched wi’ sore hearts from the shelter of the roof, and we saw Sir David Blythewood and the captain come out on to the snow by the fringe of the shaw no earlier than this morning; and I cried at once, ‘They ha’ taken refuge in the ice-house, and have lain there in ignorance to this moment!’”
“Go on, Betty. Are you sure of the way? Never mind my crowing, girl. I haven’t broken food or tasted drink for three days, and my lungs are like glass paper.”
“Oh me! but I will not cry for a minute. I took Jim, and we found our way to the hole and went down into it; and there sure enough under the ledge was a stone in the wall that turned on a great pin; and this we swung round and saw a black gully shoot before us. Well, we took a candle and entered, and not twenty feet in, the light went out and we had to walk in darkness.”
“Oh, my child, my little Betty! That said ‘Go back!’ as plain as foul gas could speak.”