She clung to him with failing strength, and drew herself up by him till she could once more rest upon his breast, with her arms tightly clasped about his neck.
“You told me at last you loved me,” she panted. “You said the words I have so hungered to hear—words I thought that I should have died and never heard pass your lips. Now that I know it, and that it is true, do not embitter my last moments by showing me that I have tried in vain.”
“I could not live without you now!” he cried passionately, as he held her to him more tightly still.
“They are coming. It is too late for me. Let me die in peace, knowing that you are saved.”
He raised her in his arms and bore her to the great stone, and, as he laid her gently down, the noise of the coming gang could be heard.
There was not a moment to lose, and any slip in his instructions would have resulted in destruction; but as he pressed against the stone it easily revolved, and he stooped once more and raised the fainting woman in his arms, to bear her down into the tomb-like structure and place her at the foot of the broad stone stairs which led into the vault.
As he loosened her arms from about his neck and passed quickly up again, there were heavy steps in the long corridor, and lights flashed through the openings of the great curtain. So close were the men that Humphrey saw their faces as he stood on the upper step, and dragged at the slab by two great hollows underneath, made, apparently, by the olden masons for the mover’s hands.
For the moment Humphrey, as he bent down there beneath the place on which he had so often slept or lain to think, felt certain that he must have been seen; but the muffled voices came close up, the steps trampled here and there, sounding dull and hollow, and there was no seizing of the great stone, no smiting upon its sides.
He held his breath as he stood bending down and listening for some indication of danger; but it seemed as if the men had coursed all over the place, searching in all directions, and were about to go, when, all at once, there was a shout close to the place where he had raised Mary from the altar.
The shout was followed by a muffled sound of many voices, and he listened, wondering what it meant. Some discovery had evidently been made, but what?