So they went on--though not without obstruction either. Once his foot caught in a mass of tangled chain lying at the base of a shaft to which one end of it was attached, and, stooping to look at it, Andrew saw amidst the coils of that chain some bones, and, a little farther off, more bones--of a hand! Yet, when he put his own hand out to touch them, they lost their shape, the fingers were gone at that touch; there lay but a feathery mass of white dust upon the earth a moment later.
"That tells its own tale," he whispered to the other. "Have centuries rolled away since that poor thing gasped its last within the chain's embrace?"
"God knows!" His companion whispered back. "They never forgave! Once in their power and all hope was gone."
"It appears," said Andrew briefly.
The vault, the foundations, were as square as the house above; ere long they had gone round them--finding more proof of how the De Bois-Vallées had used it as a final prison. A knife, rusty now, yet once a long, keen blade, was sticking point downward in the earth; they asked themselves if, ages ago, it had struck, pierced something between its hilt and point that was not earth then?--something that had long since vanished away to dust. They found, also, a woman's necklace set with quaint cut stones lying near a heap of rags, black with time and perishable to the touch, and asked again what story of horror was buried and forgotten here?
At last they found the outlet from that gloomy vault--a long dark passage that led away to blackness impenetrable. A passage that, in the past, had had a thick sturdy door to bar all entrance to, and way through it, but which door now lay flat upon the earthen floor--mouldered and decayed from off its hinges.
"Come," again said Andrew, wasting no words now, "Come, Debrasques."
And on down that passage they moved, side by side, the light flickering on earthen walls shored up with old beams and rotting staves, and with the bottoms of roots of trees showing through the uppermost parts.
Also--though they scarce knew why, nor could they have told what they expected--each had in his hand his drawn sword now.
Afar off, adown that ghastly passage, they saw a gleam of light that each knew to be the light of the winter day--a gleam that was no bigger, as it seemed, than a star, yet that still told the end was there. Was the end of the outlet.