Deborah let herself cautiously down into the darkness.
"Ah," said she, as she felt the solid level beneath her feet, "if we could only trust God as easily as I can trust my child!"
"But why shouldn't we, dear heart?" replied the boy. "God says, 'I will guide thee with mine eye.' Hasn't He done so with me?"
He took his sister's hand and led on boldly for a few paces.
"Wait. Yes, we turn this way, for the air comes from this direction. Stoop, sister! Uriah once bumped his head here. Now we are past it. Uriah said the roof here was twenty cubits high, and was held up by big pillars of the rock which hadn't been cut away. One day he lit a lamp in here, and the bats flew about like black shooting-stars. Listen! That's the water that comes from Solomon's Pools, down by Bethlehem; the same that spouts up in our fountain. And that drip, drip, drip—Uriah said it was the dying heart-beats of our nation. God make him mistaken for once! It's nothing but leaks. And——"
Caleb did not finish his sentence. Even Deborah exclaimed in alarm. A sharp cry rang through the cavernous passage. At the next instant Caleb was thrown from his feet. Something large, yet soft, brushed him. He heard the quick snapping of teeth, then a rustling beyond them, which suddenly ceased.
"It's only a fox. Uriah said that one day he chased one into the big crack in the north wall. Lots of them must live in here, or else foxes haven't got the wit they are thought to have."
A little further on the fugitives felt the air to be fresher and warmer. A light flickered in the distance. It seemed to Deborah to come through a window with shifting lattice-work.
"That's the opening through the city wall, not far from the north gate," said Caleb. "It is covered up with bushes on the outside. That's the reason the soldiers haven't found it yet. The wind blows the bushes like a curtain, Uriah says, and it makes the light blink."