“But you will be safe there for the present, Nat.”
“Safe enough, I suppose, sir,” groaned the poor fellow.
“Well, let me lay your legs here, and I can slide you down.”
“But I aren’t dead yet, dear lad. Don’t hurry it so fast as that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Going to bury me, aren’t you, sir?”
“What nonsense, man! There’s a long passage there leading to a vault.”
“Yes, sir; that’s what I thought. Don’t do it till I’m quite gone.”
In spite of hunger, misery, anxiety, and pain, Scarlett Markham could not refrain from laughing at Nat’s perplexed countenance, with so reassuring an effect that the poor fellow smiled feebly in return, took heart, and allowed himself to be slid down through the opening, the task being so well managed that Nat sank on the stone floor, and when Scarlett loosened his hands, he subsided gently against the wall.
Then, after removing a few of the tracks of his passage, the elasticity of the undergrowth and its springing up helping the concealment, Scarlett descended to his henchman’s side, and after a pause helped him along the passage right to the vault, where, as soon as he had got rid of his burthen, the lad found his father sleeping calmly.