‘Brion! How long you are!’
He hurried to the steps and up them, and half emerging: ‘Come down—quick!’ he said. ‘There is something odd here.’
She obeyed, readily enough—negotiating the narrow opening with grace but caution, while he stood below to guide her—and in another moment was wondering beside him in the chamber.
‘It is not as I left it,’ he said. ‘Some one has been in here since then.’
‘The stranger himself, mayhap,’ she murmured, gazing open-eyed about her.
‘Yes, but why? He could not while he lay a’bed; and afterwards he had no need. Was this brought by him?’
He strode a step, and lifted from the wall, against which it leaned, a short heavy crowbar. But he had hardly raised the thing, when he flung it down with an exclamation.
‘What is that against the wall there?’
It showed out in the now brilliant flare of the taper—a broken and twisted slab of wood or metal, propped against the base of the wall in that angle of it where the bed had once lain. Brion took a step or two, and bent.
‘It is heavy as lead,’ he said. ‘Why, it is lead!’—and, with a heave or two, he trundled the thing away, and let it drop upon the floor. In the place where it had stood was revealed an oblong opening, forming the mouth to a cavity of unknown depth. With a shout of excitement he thrust in his hand, and, finding a hold for it in an iron stanchion affixed to some object, pulled with all his force. And, with his pull, there came sliding easily into the light a thing of very wonder.