“Oh, yes.”
“Well, then, let go. I’m going to tie the two ends together and come down too.”
This was soon done, and down I went, my knees braced against one side of the chimney and my shoulders against the other. Standing upon the top ledge, while Percy stood upon the lowest one, I lit my candle—for we had “annexed” a couple of candle-ends when we went down for the rope.
“That’s the passage, all right,” said I. “But how did that old buffer in the history-book ever get up to it? Ah, I see. Look here—come up a step. Do you see this big iron staple with three rusty links of chain attached to it? The chain must have hung down into the fireplace once, so that an active fellow might pull himself up by it and draw it up after him. But I suppose the rain, running down the chimney for two hundred years, has rusted it all away. These links look pretty rotten themselves.”
They were, indeed, pretty rotten; for, as I spoke, I picked up one of them and broke it to pieces with my finger and thumb quite easily. The staple itself, however, being thicker, and being placed farther inside the passage, was still perfectly sound.
“Come on,” said Percy. “Let us crawl down the passage and see where it leads to.”
After crawling for a short distance we found that the roof of the passage rose sufficiently to enable us to stand upright, and directly afterwards we came upon a flight of stone stairs ascending into the darkness. Up these we went, ten steps, emerging presently through a square hole into a little room, in which were a small fireplace and a window, the latter covered with ivy. Looking through this window we could see the school and the village, and we guessed at once that the room was built in the wall of the Keep, which we knew to be immensely thick.
As may be supposed, we were highly jubilant over our discovery. We decided at once that we would keep our secret to ourselves, if possible; that the room should be our own private den, to which nobody, on any pretence whatever, should be admitted.
The first thing to be done was to provide some ready means of access to the passage, and this we accomplished before the day was out.
Procuring from the village blacksmith a stout iron bar, we laid it across one corner of the chimney-top in receptacles made for the purpose by prying up some of the stones, and having reset the stones as well as we could, the first part of our task was completed. The next thing was to attach to the bar one half of the rope, which I had begged from my father, and after tying a short, stout piece of wood every two feet of its length, to drop it down the chimney. The other half of the rope we tied in like manner to the big staple in the entrance of the passage, and as it reached to within seven feet of the hearthstone we were able to go up or down as we liked. There was little chance that anybody would discover the end of the rope in the chimney, for, though the boys were in the habit of playing hide-and-seek about the castle, they were all aware that there was nowhere to hide in the fireplace, while the occasional tourist was unlikely to go in there at all.