‘Take mine!’ I said, with _malice prepense_; ‘it’s quite strong enough to keep you from slipping.’ ‘Oh no! I couldn’t think of it. I might fall and pull you down with me. But if Mr. Charteris would help me——’ ‘All right! You can take my arm if you wish it. But we can’t walk abreast through the passages,’ he answered, with anything but lover-like alacrity, and something made me turn to Ange and whisper: ‘Are you not frightened, dear, too? If so, I can hold you up.’ But she said calmly: ‘There is nothing to be frightened of, Hilda. We are on the solid ground now, and can fall no lower.’ In another minute the guides had turned and led us through a passage cut in the rock. We were not going up nor down stairs now, but picking our way over slippery stones, and between places sometimes so narrow and so low, that gaunt Mr. Carolus knocked his head more than once, as he disregarded the guides’ warning cry of ‘_Tête!_’ and the majority of us got bruised arms and shoulders. Every now and then we came upon a larger excavation which was called a _salle_, and bore some name consequent on the likeness assumed by the stalactites it contained. One was termed _Salle de Brahma_, because it held a lump of crystal somewhat resembling the idol of that name. Another _Salle du Sacrifice_, its principal attraction being a large flat stone, at the foot of which was another, shaped like a sausage and entitled _tombeau de la victime_. We paced after the guides through these cavernous passages for what appeared to me to be miles, my mind, meanwhile, being divided between fear that I should leave my best pair of boots behind me in the slushy clay, and apprehension as to the appearance my crape would present when I reached home again. I heard Mrs. Carolus, every now and then, querulously complaining to ‘Willy’ of the pains she was acquiring in her back from the constant stooping, and I knew that Sophy Markham was dogging Mr. Charteris’s steps as closely as the circumstances would admit of, and that Tessie and Ange plodded behind me silent and uncomplaining. I was beginning to think that we had come on a very foolish expedition and were likely to have more pain than pleasure for our trouble, when I found we were ploughing our way up again, on fungus-covered ladders and wet slippery stairs upon which it was most difficult to keep a footing, until we arrived at what was decidedly the finest sight there, the _Salle du Sabbat_. Here the guides proposed to send up a spirit balloon, in order to show us the height and extent of the vast cavern, and went away, taking the lamps with them, having first planted us in a row on the edge of a precipice, and conjured us not to stir until their return. I think we felt little inclination to do so. The blackness about us was so thick that we could almost _feel_ it, and the silence was that of death. Ange slipped her little hand in mine, and whispered: