“Indeed!” said Tom; “I hope you’re not a believer in dreams. Don’t, I beseech you, take it into your head that it’s going to be realised at this particular moment, whatever it was.”
“It would take a very strong amount of belief indeed to induce me to expect the realisation of that dream. Shall I tell it you?”
“Is it a very ghostly one?” inquired Tom.
“No; not at all.”
“Then out with it.”
Ned immediately began the narration of the remarkable dream with which this story opens, and as he went on to tell of how the stout old gentleman snuffed gold-dust, and ultimately shot up to the roof of the cave, and became a golden stalactite, Tom Collins, whose risible tendencies were easily roused, roared with laughter, until the vaulted caverns echoed again. At the end of one of these explosions, the two friends were struck dumb by certain doleful and mysterious sounds which proceeded from the further end of the inmost chamber. In starting to his feet, Tom Collins let fall his torch, and in the convulsive clutch which he made to catch it, he struck the other torch out of Ned’s hand, so that instantly both were left in the profoundest darkness, with their hearts beating like sledge-hammers against their ribs.
To flee was their first and natural impulse; but to flee in the dark, over rough ground, and with very imperfect ideas as to the position of the cave’s outlet, was dangerous.
“What is to be done?” ejaculated Tom Collins in a tone that indicated the perturbation of his heart too clearly.
At that moment Ned remembered that he had a box of matches in the pocket of his hunting-coat; so, without answering, he drew it forth, struck a light, and re-ignited the torches.
“Now, Tom,” he said, “don’t let us give way to unmanly fears. I have no belief whatever in ghosts or spirits, good or evil, being permitted to come in visible or audible form to frighten poor mortals. Every effect has a cause, and I’m determined to find out the cause of these strange sounds. They certainly proceed from animal lungs, whether from man or beast remains to be seen.”