“No, no, sir. You can do that when you come again.”
“Very well,” said Gwyn, who did not feel in the least alarmed, but who could see the great drops standing on the mining captain’s face. “Lead on, then. Where’s Grip?”
The dog was gone.
“Here! Hi! Grip! Grip!” cried Gwyn.
There was a faint bark from a distance, and Gwyn called again, but there was no further response.
“He knows it’s wrong, sir,” said Hardock, solemnly, “so let’s hurry after him.”
“Go on, then,” said Joe; and Gwyn reluctantly followed them through the grotto, and then along a natural crack in the rock, which was painful for walking, being all on a slope. But this soon came to an end, and they found themselves in another grotto, but with a low-arched roof and wanting in the crystallisations of the first.
“You have been all along here, Sam?” said Gwyn, suddenly.
For answer Hardock took a few steps forward, and held up his lanthorn to display a roughly-brushed white arrow on the wall pointing forward.
“You can always tell where we’ve been now, sir,” said the man. “This bends in and out for nearly a quarter of a mile; now it’s caverns, now it’s cracks, and then we come again upon old workings which lead off by what I call one of the mine endings. After that we get to the big hall, and that low wet gallery; I know my way right through now.”