“And how long is the tunnel?” I asked. “Will we soon enter the city?”
“No,” she replied, “it is a great distance from the crater to Laythe.”
We had covered some little distance at this time, possibly five or six miles, and she had scarcely ceased speaking when a turn in the passageway led us into a cave of larger proportions than any through which we had previously passed and from the opposite side of which two passageways diverged.
“I thought there were no branches,” I remarked.
“I do not understand it,” she said. “There is no branch from the tunnel of Laythe.”
“Could it be possible that we are in the wrong tunnel?” I asked, “and that this does not lead to Laythe?”
“A moment before I should have been sure that we were in the right tunnel,” she replied, “but now, Julian, I do not know, for never had I heard of any branch of our own tunnel.”
We had crossed the cave and were standing between the openings of the two divergent passageways.
“Which one shall we take?” I asked, but again she shook her head.
“I do not know,” she replied.