“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mark hurriedly. “Let’s get back. I know it’s stupid, but one knows that there must have been thousands upon thousands of people living here, no one can tell how long back, and I don’t like it.”
“I say,” said Dean, and as he spoke he gave an uneasy glance round, “isn’t that being superstitious?”
“I don’t know,” replied his cousin. “Perhaps it is; but I can’t help feeling a bit queer. When we get in these dark parts where the sun doesn’t shine and it’s all so silent till you speak—there, hark at that! We are just at the mouth of that great passage where the walls, quite forty feet high, are close together and go winding away—and there, you can hear that; it’s just as if something was taking up what I said and whispering.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Dean aloud, and then turning sharply he caught excitedly at his cousin’s arm, gripping it almost painfully, and dragged at him to hurry him away. “Oh, I say,” he whispered, for his laugh had turned into an almost unearthly burst of harsh chuckles and cries which went literally rattling away down the dark passage nearly choked with thick growth and only dimly-seen. “Oh, do come away, Mark! This isn’t the passage we came to that day with uncle and the doctor. There must be something watching us—something no canny, as the Scotch people call it. Quick, let’s get away.”
“I can’t,” said Mark. “I feel as if I couldn’t stir.”
“Why? Is something seeming to hold you?”
“No,” replied Mark; “but I do feel rather shuddery all down my back, and—I know it’s nervousness and imagination—that’s why I feel I can’t go away. It is all nonsense, I tell you, and I mean to come here another time with Buck and Dan, and we will see what they think of it.”
“That will all depend on how we look to them,” said Dean.
“Exactly,” said his cousin, “and that means that we mustn’t behave like a pair of shivering girls.”
“And then?” asked Dean.