"There, I think I have drawn the monster's teeth," he said, reaching for a lantern. "One of you will please hold another lantern at the entrance here. I may need help."
Ruth Stuart snatched a lantern from one of the countrymen and stepped promptly up beside the young man. He nodded.
"Do not try to follow me in here unless I tell you to. I must first find out what is in here."
"Do you think they are there?" she asked in a half whisper.
"Yes. Probably below somewhere," he answered, thrusting the lantern ahead of him and crawling into the opening he had made.
Bob found himself in a narrow chamber formed by a gable that had been shut off and enclosed by the partition. He did not trouble himself at that moment to investigate the strangeness of the disappearance of his maul. Instead, he began going over the little room cautiously. The light from his lantern soon revealed a hole in the floor about a yard square.
"Don't lean against that partition on your life," he called. Those near the entrance to the gable apartment drew back a little. They gazed at the apparently solid wall to the left of the hole, in respectful silence. Bob lowered his lantern into the hole and peered in. It appeared to extend down a long distance. A trap door that evidently was intended to cover the opening, lay to one side of the opening. As he peered in he saw that the opening revealed a bricked-in shaft.
"A chimney, as I live!" he exclaimed. Then he raised his voice in a long-drawn shout.
"Hello-o-o down there!" There was no response. Stevens called again. A faint wail drifted up through the shaft. Ruth, at the panel, hearing it, uttered a scream of joy.
"They're there! They're there!" she cried.