She had time to make these calculations between the kitchen and the yard door; through which they half-led, half-pushed her into the night. With all a woman’s natural timidity on finding herself held and helpless in the dark, she had to put restraint upon herself not to try to break loose, not to scream. But she conquered herself and let them lead her, unresisting and as one blindfold, where they pleased.
It was clear that they knew the place well. For, though the darkness in the depths of this bowl in the hills was absolute, they did not unmask the lanthorn; but moved confidently for a distance of some fifty yards. The dog, kenneled near, had given tongue as they left the house. But once only. And when they paused, all was so still in the frosty mist that wrapped them about and clutched the throat, that Henrietta’s ear caught the trickle of water near at hand.
“Where are we?” she muttered. “Where are we?” She hung back in sudden, uncontrollable alarm.
“Mum, fool!” Bess hissed in her ear. “Be still, or it will be the worse with you. Have you,” she continued, in the same low tone, “undone the door, lad?”
For answer a wooden door groaned on its hinges.
“Right!” Bess murmured. “Bend your head, girl!”
Henrietta obeyed, and pushed forward by an unseen hand, she advanced three paces, and felt a warmer air salute her cheek. The door groaned again; she heard a wooden bolt thrust home. Bess let her hand go and unmasked the lanthorn.
Henrietta shivered. She was in a covered well-head, whence the water, after filling a sunken caldron, about which the moss hung in dark, snaky wreaths, escaped under the wooden door. Some yeoman of bygone days had come to the help of nature, and after enlarging a natural cavity had enclosed it, to protect the water from pollution. The place was so small that it no more than held the three who stood in it, nor all of them dry-shod. And Henrietta’s heart sank indeed before the possibility of being left to pass the night in this dank cave.
Bess’s next movement freed her from this fear. The girl turned the light on the rough wall, and seizing an innocent-looking wooden peg, which projected from it, pushed the implement upwards. A piece of the wall, of the shape and size of a large oven door, fell downwards and outwards, as the tail of a cart falls. It revealed a second cavity of which the floor stood a couple of feet higher than the ground on which they were. It was very like a spacious bread-oven, though something higher and longer; apparently it had been made in the likeness of one.
But Henrietta did not think of this, or of its shape or its purpose. For the same light, a dim, smoky lamp burning at the far end of the place, which revealed its general aspect, disclosed a bundle of straw and a forlorn little form.