“Then the places on each side here face the moat, one to the north, the other to the west.”
“Well, not exactly, sir, but nearly.”
“Then the secret passage can’t begin at the end of either of these, and been built up.”
“I dunno, sir. Folk in the past as had to do with them passages did all they could to make ’em cunning.”
“But they couldn’t have made a passage through the moat.”
“Of course not, sir; it must have gone under it.”
“Then it couldn’t have started from here.”
“Why not, sir?” said Ben, with a low laugh; “what’s to prevent there being another dungeon like this on the other side of the wall there, one with a trap-door in it leading down ever so many steps into another place, and the passage begin ten or twenty foot deeper.”
“Something like the powder-magazine is made?”
“That’s it, sir. We’re in the lower part of a big round tower, and we know there’s those floors above us one on top of the other, and we don’t know that the old Roylands who built this place mayn’t have dug down and down before they started it, and made one, two, or three floors below where we stand.”