With the same indifference he passed the tomb of King Walder, to which so many mournful legends cling, and he heard no voice save the long-drawn sigh of the north wind through those gloomy galleries.
He traversed winding passages, dimly lighted by crevices half stopped with grass and heather. Ever and anon he stumbled over strange objects, which rolled from beneath his foot with a hollow sound, and assumed in the darkness the shape of broken skulls or long rows of white teeth with fleshless gums.
But his soul was undismayed. He was only surprised that he had not yet encountered the much-dreaded inhabitant of this horrible cave.
He reached a sort of circular hall, hewn from the rock. Here the subterranean road which he had thus far followed came to an end, and the rocky walls were without exit, save for a few wide fissures, through which he saw the mountains and woods outside.
Amazed that he should have thus traversed the fatal cavern in vain, he began to despair of finding the brigand. A singular monument in the middle of the underground hall caught his attention. Three long, massive bowlders, standing upright, supported a fourth, broad and square, as three pillars might uphold a roof. Beneath this gigantic tripod was an altar, also formed of a single block of granite, with a round hole in the middle of its upper surface. Ordener recognized it as one of those colossal Druidic structures which he had often seen in travelling through Norway, the most amazing instances being found in France, at Lokmariaker and Karnak,—wondrous fabrics which have grown old, resting upon the earth like tents pitched for a day, and made solid by their mere weight.
The young man, lost in thought, leaned mechanically against this altar, whose stone lips were stained dark brown, so deep had they drunk of the blood of human victims.
All at once he started. A voice, apparently proceeding from the stone, fell upon his ear: “Young man, you come to this place with feet which touch the tomb.”
He rose quickly, and his hand sought his sword, while an echo, clear but faint as the voice of a dying man, repeated: “Young man, you come to this place with feet which touch the tomb.” At this instant a hideous face appeared on the other side of the Druid altar, a face crowned with red hair, and disfigured by a brutal sneer.
“Young man,” it again repeated, “you come to this place with feet which touch the tomb.”
“And with a hand which touches a sword,” calmly responded Ordener.