Receiving apparently no reply to his hail, he turned and beckoned me to climb up by his side.
"Can you hear anything, Master Eden?" he asked.
I listened intently, but no sound caught my ear but the muffled surge and splash of the water in the cavern.
"There!" exclaimed my companion—"there again! Don't you hear it?"
Still to my dulled hearing no fresh sound was audible.
"What was it?" I asked.
Without answering my question, he once more roared, "Hollo, there!" through the widened hole, and remained with warning hand uplifted, as though expecting an answering shout. "Fancy, I suppose," he muttered at length. "Yet that blind fellow heard something of the sort too. Tut! I think I'm going queer in my head."
He went on digging, but once or twice I noticed that he paused in the same curious manner. I was too weary to pay much attention, but continued laboriously scooping and dragging the earth he loosened till my fingers seemed raw. At length Woodley stopped digging, and sat down for a rest. As he moved the lamp the dim oil flame gave me a momentary glimpse of his face, and on it I thought I detected a queer expression which I had never noticed there before.
For ten minutes, perhaps, he sat regaining his breath, and saying nothing; then turning to me he asked abruptly,—
"Master Eden, do you believe there's such things as ghosts?"