Well, I grabbed my hook and made after my shadowy man who had darted from behind the big reading desk. I knew some mystic palaver or other had been going on, but what that mummery had to do with the death or disappearance of my father I did not care--only just streaked it down the passage. It was dark as pitch, of course, but firm underfoot, and of a uniform height. The walls had been painted recently, I should say, for I felt the bits of plaster come away in my hand as I put it out, and all along the courses of the stones felt ridgy. Then all of a sudden it dipped down, and the going got wet and soppy. "Under the moat!" said I to myself, thinking myself no end clever to have hit on it. "We will be going up presently," I added to myself. Just so it happened. And then Joseph Yarrow thought himself the cleverest fellow in the world; though, come to think of it now, it was really a chance word of Elsie's that set me on the track. Anyway, there was somebody before me, for I heard a door open, then shut, and, as it seemed, a kind of fumbling as if with a key which wouldn't act. I was at the door in a trice--indeed, I rather tumbled upon it. For there were two or three steps leading up, pretty sloppy and slippery with green stuff, and the smell of dank earth all about. Also, it got cold, while it had been quite warm below. So I knew we were getting near the surface where the black frost was. Plung! I darted my long staff with the hook at the end of it between the door and the doorpost. Luckily it caught on the steel part, so the man behind could not get the key to turn. Way there! I used my staff as a lever. The door gave. And in the chill dawn I found myself in a little sham ruin, covered with ivy, quite near the place where Mr. Stennis got off his pony and came upon us the very first day Elsie and I had ever gone to Deep Moat Grange. There was nobody there. My gentleman had failed to lock the door, but had managed to shoot an outside bolt which my long hook lever had torn away like so much brown paper. I climbed through a gap in the ruin--either a bit of an old cottage, such as shepherds live in, or, more probably, a thing built on purpose to shield the head of the secret passage. I had never thought of secret passages in connection with the Grange. But, of course--come to think of it--the people there would not have respected themselves if they had not at least one. They saw to it first thing--after the little coffins. "Necessities first, luxuries after," as my poor mother used to say when she confiscated my Saturday's penny for the Sunday's church collection.