“You see her?” murmured the old woman.
Wynnette tried to speak, but failed.
“Watch!” said the crone.
Wynnette watched, breathlessly, her senses reeling. The shape presently began to change as clouds change, from form to form, and presently to arise like a pillar of mist, and take the form of a woman, young, fair, angelic, with an infant pressed to her bosom, and with heavenward gaze, slowly ascending in a path of light, which faded as she disappeared.
“There, she has gone! and we will go,” said the crone, as she tightened her grasp on the girl’s hand and drew her away.
No longer terrified, but awed, confused, bewildered, Wynnette allowed herself to be passively drawn away, and they began to toil up from the depths. Wynnette thought of Dante’s return from the Inferno, when he “saw the stars again.”
At length, more dead than alive, she began to realize, that though they were still in darkness, they were creeping over level ground or a stone floor. They were stealing along a dark and narrow passage, as she thought; for once when she stretched out her hand at arm’s length she felt the damp stone wall.
Presently, far off ahead of them, she saw the faint glimmer of a red light. As they drew nearer to this, she saw that it came through the chinks of an ill-fitting door.
When they reached the door the crone opened it, and Wynnette recognized, with feelings of relief, the great hall of the castle, and knew that they were above ground.
A fire of faggots burned on the flagstones, and burned more clearly in the freer air than had that smoldering, smoking heap of rubbish in the subterranean dungeon below.