Matches which he always carried soon revealed to him the nature of the place--damp, foul-smelling cellar that it was, with the only outlet the trap-door through which he had fallen, a good five feet above his head. Beyond a feeling of great weakness, he felt neither fear nor pain. That he had been thrown there as dead he understood perfectly well, and yet--brave heart that he was--he refused to banish hope. The hours passed. Caleb Hook has exhausted every means to reach that trap above him, but in vain. Crouched in a corner we see him now, his head buried in his hands. Through the foul place the rats scurry past, but he heeds them not--his thoughts are upon the strange case in following which he has come to this living death. The robbery of the Webster bank--the following of the strange woman--the murder of Mrs. Marley and her singular reappearance in the church-yard later on, passed one after another in hopeless procession through his mind. The capture of the burglar, Joe Dutton, the man who dropped the dollars at the Catherine Market--whom we should have stated before was arrested by a policeman on Cherry street before he had run a dozen yards--and his untimely death also rose up before him. That he had been poisoned by his associates in crime the detective could not doubt. And the thought gave him no courage. If these scoundrels had no mercy to share to their own what hope was there for him? Hark! What sound was that? Surely there are footsteps walking on the floor above? Springing to his feet he stares wildly at the trap-door above his head. It moves! It opens! But alas! it opens not in aid to him! There is a low murmuring of voices, and suddenly the body of a large and powerful man drops through the open trap, falling heavily at the detective's feet. CHAPTER XXVII. THE JONAH. As the body of the falling man struck the slimy floor of the old sub-cellar beneath the Donegal Shades, Detective Hook sprang back against the damp and dripping wall. It was well that he did so. With a heavy thud the man fell at his feet half buried in the foul and pasty mud. Instantly the trap-door was heard to close above him, followed by the sound of feet moving away. "Oh, God--oh, God, have mercy on my sinful soul! Must I die here like a dog?" From the man at his feet the sound went forth. Caleb Hook kneeled by his side. "Courage, friend!" he whispered. "Courage! God may help us yet!" "Ah--ah! Keep off--keep off!" shrieked the dying man. "Is not one ghost enough to haunt me, that the voice of the man I helped to bury in this devil's den must come ringing in my ears? Keep off, I say! Detective Hook, I know your voice! I did not raise a hand to kill you! You know it well enough!" Crack! The last match possessed by the detective is lighted--he holds it to the face before him. "Reuben Tisdale, you, the most successful maker of burglars' tools known among the crooks of New York!"