“There, the trigorgon has got him,” said the big harvester.
“You mean the giant thith,” pointed-nose corrected.
I am glad to tell you, however, that they were both wrong. This is what had happened at the ruin.
Now Hugh had carried an ancient lantern with him from the village, and halfway up the hill he paused, cut a likely branch from an ash, and fashioned himself a stout and serviceable staff. Thus armed, he arrived at the great gate of the ruin, and forced his way through the thorn trees by the portal into the roofless square of the walls. There were trees there, too, and though the leaves were still green, every now and then one went drifting through the silence to the ground. In the heart of the wooded court, a broad flight of steps, overgrown with moss and shrubs of shallow root, led down into a darkness far below.
Grasping his cudgel firmly, Hugh descended the woodsy stair. The sunlight disappeared behind, the green moss grew no more, and clumps of leathery toadstools burst from the muddy crannies of the stone. Suddenly the runaway soldier found himself facing a giant pointed door of blackest adamant. Over the arch of it, in letters of ancient form, was carved a legend saying:—
He who would share the treasure
must conquer a mighty foe within
Behind the door something was roaring and roaring. “’Tis surely the trigorgon,” thought Hugh, his heart pounding at his ribs. Summoning up all his courage, the runaway soldier threw back the adamant door.
The instant he did so, the roaring rose to a howling shriek, and a gust of the storm wind, magically imprisoned in the caves of the hill, went whistling out of the adamant door and up the tunnel of the stairway to the sun. It was this cry of the imprisoned gust which had made them shake their heads in the village below.
And now Hugh bravely set foot into the darkness and, holding his twinkling light at arm’s length ahead, advanced to meet the mighty foe within. Through great halls he fared, and heard queer noises which he took to be the steps of the trigorgon, but were only the echoes of his own steps tapping in the dark; through long tunnels he trod, and heard breathings and whispers which he took to be the sighs of the thith, but were only the echoes of a chuckling brook, flowing somewhere in the wall. On and on went Hugh, and laughed a little to himself when he mistook two shining points of stone for the eyes of the winged bogus, and a monstrous round rock for the bulk of the mistophant.