“Where is he?”
“He has gone, dear lady. Oh, this is dreadful! What shall we do? Dear mistress, what does he mean?”
“Sh! Are they not in the other cavern?”
“I think not. I will look.” And the brave girl took a candle and looked out into the larger apartment—that which they had first entered—and found it empty.
“Oh, dear mistress! Who is that man? What—”
“Hush! Let me think. Or—let us look around, Mary, and determine where we are.”
By a little effort the stricken lady collected her mental and physical forces, and started, with her companion, on a tour of investigation.
She went around the larger cave, examining every part; but the point of entrance claimed her special care. She was able to detect the section of stone that was movable.
The distance she had been forced to stoop aided her in determining this; and, further, the instruction she gained from Percy, during their exploration of, she firmly believed, a cavernous passage of which this was a branch.
“Mary,” she said, when she had seen all there was to be seen, “you remember the wall which stopped our further progress on the day when we came with Percy to the Old Chapel—the wall in which we found a crevice through which we looked forth into another cave beyond?”