Its action upon that nerve spent, and the eyes of Caleb Hook opened to life once more.
Where he was or how he came there were two questions which he was unable to decide.
Matches which he always carried soon revealed to him the nature of the place—damp, foul-smelling cellar that it was, with the only outlet the trap-door through which he had fallen, a good five feet above his head.
Beyond a feeling of great weakness, he felt neither fear nor pain.
That he had been thrown there as dead he understood perfectly well, and yet—brave heart that he was—he refused to banish hope.
The hours passed.
Caleb Hook has exhausted every means to reach that trap above him, but in vain.
Crouched in a corner we see him now, his head buried in his hands.
Through the foul place the rats scurry past, but he heeds them not—his thoughts are upon the strange case in following which he has come to this living death.
The robbery of the Webster bank—the following of the strange woman—the murder of Mrs. Marley and her singular reappearance in the church-yard later on, passed one after another in hopeless procession through his mind.