Hastening to his side and applying my knife to the thin ragged crevice he had discovered, I found the stone was loose. I worked feverishly while Dick held the torch. 'Now it's coming!' I cried, and even as I spoke it fell forward and crashed on to the floor. To us scrutinising the aperture, there seemed evidently a spring or catch concealed behind it. Thrusting in my arm I pressed it home. A creak sounded; there was a rusty wheeze, and a portion of the wall seemed to shake and move slowly inwards. 'We've got it!' yelled Dick, as he pressed his shoulder against the receding portion, 'it's a wooden door covered over with thin slabs of stone.' 'Forrard!' cried Dick. 'Forrard on!' and as he shouted he pressed forward down a narrow, dusty aperture towards a chamber beyond where a dim light showed through the begrimed roof above. I pressed on hotly at his heels through the six feet of passage. We were now within the threshold of the secret cell. But what was that horrible thing beneath the dim sky-light? Dick's electric torch was failing, and we could not see distinctly, and a very oppression of fear seized upon us both. What was the gruesome object in front that resembled a dead octopus with decayed black arms? There was a sickly taint in the air, and as I stood there fascinated by fear Dick took a step forward and threw the faint light of his torch upon the atrocious figure. Surely it was a gorilla grasping its victim, and bending it in to itself as in some horrid act of rape! Dick advanced yet another foot. Then I perceived that it was worse even than I suspected, for I now distinguished a giant species of _Nepenthes_ (_Nepenthes Ferocissimus_) most monstrously developed, clutching in its long arms and horrid ascidiums the remains of a human victim--apparently a woman--for a gleam of yellow satin showed beneath the black embrace. Good God! I thought of the 'fisherman's daughter' with a shudder. I heard the torch drop. Then came a rustling shiver. The monstrous growth had sunk to the floor under pressure of the fresh air! I thought I had fainted, but the next moment I felt Dick's hand shaking upon my sleeve, and heard a voice quaver in my ear: _'Let's get out of this! It's altogether too damned beastly._' 'MUCKLE-MOUTHED MEG' 'Hang him, Provost!'[1] cried the Town Clerk; 'he was caught red-handed; i' the verra manner, makin' awa aff wi' a quey o' your ain frae oor Common.' 'Fear God, Provost,' exhorted the Burgh Chamberlain, astonished at the Provost's hesitancy, 'but ne'er a North Tyne Robson.' 'Ay,' rang out a dozen voices from the crowd assembled in front of the Provost's house in Hawick, 'mak him "kiss the woodie"; let the prood Northumbrian thief cool his heels i' the wind!' 'Up wi' him!' cried Madge wi' the Fiery Face, who had just been loosed from the 'jougs,' wherein she had been confined for 'kenspeckle incontinence.' 'Up wi' the clarty callant! Let him swing like a corby craa i' a taty patch!'