"Come, come, Master Roland; but mind, it needs a brave heart."
I confess it here, I hesitated before following. How it may appear to those who read this I know not, but at that moment I seemed to be in a ghastly dream. Everything had become unreal to me save the shadow of a great terror. The old man, with his head sunk between his shoulders, was such a creature as only comes to one in a nightmare; the king's marriage contract existed only in the wild imaginings of foolish men. A thousand dangers suggested themselves, nameless dangers, and therefore all the more terrible, and try as I might I could not keep from trembling.
"Afraid, Master Roland, eh? Ay, and well thou mayst be, for this hole is full of lost spirits. Hark! do you not hear them?"
In the excited state of my imagination I fancied I heard distant wails, and I felt my blood run cold.
"And yet only yesternight the fair Constance took this road, and she was not afraid."
He said this tauntingly, which caused anger to take the place of fear. I still held his right arm, the hand of which grasped one of the staves of the ladder, and his words made my grasp the tighter.
"I will come with you, Father Solomon," I said; "but mind, if you betray me, I will send you to hell with all your sins upon your head."
With that I placed my foot upon the ladder, but in so doing I had to relax my hold upon him. I heard him cackling to himself while he went farther and still farther into the darkness.
I had not descended more than six steps before I heard a noise above me, and then I knew that the trap door which had lifted was closed again, and that in all probability the secret of its opening was only known to the man whose breath could be distinctly heard just beneath me.
As may be imagined, I lost no time in going down the ladder, and the moment my feet touched the ground I grasped the old man's arm again.