“Take me home, oh, take me home!” cried Luella in low suppressed tones, trembling and half-falling. I put my arm about her to support her.
“What is it?” I asked.
She leaned upon me for one moment, and the black walls and gloomy passage became a palace filled with flowers. Then her strength and resolution returned, and she shook herself free.
“Come; let us go back to the others,” she said a little unsteadily. “We should not have left them.”
“Certainly,” I replied. “They ought to be here by this time.”
But as we turned, a sudden cry sounded as of an order given. There was a bang of wood and a click of metal, and, as we looked, we saw that unseen hands had closed the way to our return. A barred and iron-bound door was locked in our faces.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE BATTLE IN THE MAZE
For an instant I was overwhelmed with terror and self-reproach. The bolted door before me gave notice of danger as plainly as though the word had been painted upon its front. The dark and lowering walls of the passage in which the Wolf figure of Doddridge Knapp had appeared and disappeared whispered threats. The close air was heavy with the suggestion of peril, and the solitary lamp that gave its dim light from the end of the passage flashed a smoky warning. And I, in my folly and carelessness, had brought Luella Knapp into this place and exposed her to the dangers that encircled me. It was this thought that, for the moment, unnerved me.