“You’ll be sure to come back?” pleaded Gilroy. “It would be a wicked thing to do to leave me here in the darkness!”
“Aw, of course we’ll come back!” interrupted Jimmie. “We’ve got to come back, for there’s no other way to get out of the gloomy old den.”
Gilroy seemed to be more cheerful over this arrangement, and assisted quite capably in lowering Jimmie over the lip of the precipice. The two passed out the rope to the boy dangling at the lower end until the cord was almost entirely unwound. Then a call from below announced toe them that the lad had found footing.
“Now then,” Ned explained to the confidential clerk, “when the rope is drawn up, you lie down on your stomach on the other side of the ledge so that you may by no possibility be drawn down. Pay out the rope slowly till I tell you that I have reached bottom and then leave it dangling over the edge. We may have to make a quick jump for it, you know,” he added. “In that case, we want it handy.”
Gilroy’s teeth fairly chattered at the thought of being left alone with such a responsibility, but he said nothing, and Ned soon stood by Jimmie’s side at the bottom of the precipice.
“Have you seen any more lights?” the boy asked.
“Nary a light,” was the reply, “but I thought once that I heard voices coming from the spot in which the illumination was seen.”
“Then we may as well be moving in that direction,” Ned observed, and directly the two boys found themselves gazing at the opening from which the water had been recently drained.
CHAPTER XVI
A FALL IN THE NIGHT
Becoming too anxious for the safety of his friends to remain seated in the position in which he had been left, Harry at last arose to his feet and advanced down the passage toward the incline where they had disappeared. He could see nothing, and presently turned back.