“Nat! Nat! There’s a stone loose here. I can move it with my foot. When I press down on it—Great-jumping-horned-toads!”
Joe’s exclamation was caused by the fact that as he pressed down on the loose stone a small door opened out before them in the end of the altar. It was impossible to say, however, whither it led, as beyond lay total darkness.
“What do you say, shall we try it?” asked Joe in a rather tremulous voice, for the darkness looked singularly mysterious and forbidding.
“We’ve got to try it,” said Nat gloomily. “It’s our only alternative, unless we want to stay here and starve to death.”
Joe had to agree that this was a true statement of the facts of the case, and not without quickened pulses the two lads made the plunge into the darkness beyond the door. The portal was square and so low that they had to bend to get through it. The rays of Joe’s candle-lantern showed the two youths that they were in a low-roofed passage, or tunnel, just wide enough for them to proceed in single file.
“You go first,” said Joe in a rather quivery tone, which showed better than anything else that the adventure was having its effect upon him, the usually unperturbed.
“All right, give me the lantern.”
“I wonder where this passage can lead to?”
“Haven’t the least idea. I think we are going south, but I’m not sure.”
“I’m all twisted up, too. I wish we’d left that old ring alone.”