"Lyon, Nelly! Where is Lyon?"
The little Skye terrier pricked up her ears and whimpered.
Then Sybil was sure that Nelly understood her words.
"Let us go find Lyon, Nelly; Lyon! Lyon! Lyon!" said Sybil, setting the little dog down and harking her on by the way she had come.
Nelly remembered where she had left "Lyon," and so with a glad bark she leapt forward and ran on as fast as the tortuous nature of the dark subterranean passage would permit her to do; pausing now and then to rest herself, and to allow her mistress time to overtake her.
"Poor, dear little faithful Nelly! don't run so fast. You were tired almost to death when you came in from your first journey, and now you set out immediately on this the moment I ask you to do it; but abate your zeal, dear little friend, or you will not be able to hold out to the end," said Sybil, sitting down and caressing her little dog while they both rested.
When they re-commenced their journey, they found the passage growing narrower, darker, and more tortuous than before. They were compelled to move slowly and cautiously.
Sybil had already recognized the natural underground road by which she had been brought to the robber's cave; but she did not know this portion of it. So she supposed that she must have been brought through it while in that state of unconsciousness into which she had fallen from terror on first being seized by the masked and shrouded forms of the men who had carried her off. She therefore hoped that she was near the outlet of the subterranean passage.
But where that outlet might be, she could not guess. The last she remembered before falling into that swoon of horror, was the vault of the Haunted Chapel. The first she saw, on recovering herself, was the middle of the subterranean passage. But whether that passage had started from the vault, or whether the men had carried her any distance over the upper earth, before descending into it, she had no means of knowing or surmising. She must wait for the revelation at the end of this underground road.
The end was fast approaching. Far ahead, a little, dim dot of gray light kept dodging right and left before her eyes, following as it were the abrupt turning of the passage. It drew nearer, nearer, and now at last it was before her.