“Ugh! Well, here am I, in this pit—this back-staircase to the devil’s dining room—alone, wet, hungry, and in darkness. St. Withold save me from all fiends, and I’ll take care of aught beside. Let me see. Mayhap I shall find some passage from this place. I am on solid rock that’s well. Now for’t.”
Cautiously creeping along in the darkness, he followed the winding of the subterranean flood by its roaring, until he was suddenly stopped by an upright stone, which, to his astonishment, he found to be square in shape, and, feeling it carefully, he doubted not that it had been shapen by the chisel of the mason.
Over this stone Robin clambered, and alighted upon a large chisseled stone laid in a horizontal position, and over this was placed another stone of like form; and thus proceeding in his discoveries our stout yeoman found that a stairway arose in front of him.
With a shout of joy, bold Robin rushed up the steps of stone, which, wide and roomy, afforded his feet firm and substantial footing. Some forty steps, or more, now lay below him, when raising his foot to ascend yet higher, the yeoman found it fall beneath him, and in a moment he stood upon a floor, which to all likelihood was laid with slabs of chisseled stone.
Through this place he wandered, now stumbling against regularly-built walls, now falling over hidden objects, now passing through doorway after doorway, and again returning to the head of the stairway from which he started.
Hours passed. Sometimes Rough Robin would hear a faint booming sound far above, which he supposed was the bell of the castle, tolling for the death of the noble Count Di Albarone, known throughout Christendom, in a thousand lays, as the bravest of crusaders, and the gentlest of knights. The sound of this bell swung upon the breeze for miles around, whenever it was struck—so Robin remembered well; yet now, far down in the depths of the earth, a low moaning noise was all that reached the ears of the stout yeoman.
With every sinew stiffened, and with every vein chilled by the damp of subterranean vaults, scarce able to breathe in the putrid air which had never known light of sunbeam, his whole frame weakened by hunger, and his brain confused by his dream-like adventures, Robin, the stout yeoman, at last sank down upon a block of rough stone, where he remained for hours in a state of half unconsciousness, which finally deepened into a sound and wholesome slumber.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE CHAPEL OF THE ROCKS.
THE MONKS OF THE ORDER OF THE HOLY STEEL HOLD SOLEMN COUNCIL IN THE WILD WOOD.
The scene was a wild and solitary dell, buried in the depths of the forests, far away among the mountains; the time was high noon, and the characters of the scene were the members of a dark and mysterious Order, whose history is involved in shadow; whose names, embracing the highest titles and the wealthiest nobles in the Dukedom of Florence, are wrapt in mystery; whose deeds, performed in secret, and executed with the most appalling severity, are to this day known and celebrated as household words, in the legends of the valley of the Arno.
A level piece of sward, some twenty yards in length, and as many in width, extended greenly within the depths of the forest; its bounds described, and its verdure shadowed, by huge masses of perpendicular rock, which sprang upward from the very sod, towering in wild and rugged grandeur, amid the deep, rich foliage of forest oaks and with the clear summer sky seen far, far above, as from the depths of a well, forming the roof of this hidden temple of nature.