It was the man’s part first to mount the parapet. Shuddering in every vein, he began to climb up to it. He was not a coward, but the desire of life was running desperately high. The girl followed close after him. Her will was firmer than his because her imagination was less. Gervase had nearly reached the coping of the low stone wall when Anne caught at his heel and drew him down again. “See,” she cried. “Is not that a hole in the ground along there by that farthest bush?” “It may be so,” said the young man, fearing for his resolve. “But let us not look back. If this were done let it be done now.” But sudden resolution had come upon Anne. Or was it that resolution was failing her? At least with this new and faint hope she was able to draw Gervase from the wall. His will had been strung to meet the death he feared with all his soul, but the passion of life in his pulses heeded her call in spite of himself. There was a void, it seemed, gaping in the ground behind the bushes but a few yards off. But Gervase could scarce drag his body towards it as they crept close by the wall to see what it might be. For now he felt with a dull sense of terror that the great moment was past. His insurgent nerves told him that not again in cold blood would he climb to the parapet of the wall. From this new errand he looked for no deliverance. But as soon as they came near they saw that the void, barely visible in the gray light, was a hole in the ground. It seemed to be a kind of cavern or deep passage burrowing far down into the very bowels of the earth. As far as they could discern it was provided with rude steps of stone, and the mouth of the cavern was protected by an iron grating. They did not wait upon one another’s word, but at once and together put forth all their strength to remove this barrier. It was so heavy that it scarcely yielded at first. But sheer desperation armed them, so that at last they were able to move the grating sufficiently to permit first one of their slender bodies and then the other to squeeze through the narrow opening into the total darkness that lay beyond. By the time they had descended three steps they could see nothing. Absolute night yawned under their feet. The unknown, terrible and immeasurable, began slowly to receive them. Whither they were going they did not know. Where the cavern led, what they would find at the end of it or what they were likely to encounter by the way were matters about which it was vain to speculate. All that they knew was that for the time being they were very precariously delivered from a more instant peril. It might be perhaps that they were going to a doom more terrible, since the unknown is ever more sinister than the known. For aught they knew the stone steps might carry them through that appalling darkness to the verge of a deep well or some abyss that would shatter them in pieces as surely as a fall from the rock itself.