With lamp in hand she led the way to the inner room, and began examining carefully the stones in the wall under where the steps had formerly led down from the closed doorway. Geoffrey meanwhile, his curiosity roused to its greatest height, watched her every movement. At last she found a little stone let into the wall, and slightly marked with a triangle at one corner. On this corner she pressed with all her strength, at first unsuccessfully, but at last it rolled back, and with it a part of the wall, disclosing a narrow doorway leading to some steps; beyond, all was darkness. In her delight she would have entered at once, but Geoffrey drew her back. He was far better acquainted with such places than she was, and conjectured that since it had evidently been closed so long, the steps might be in too dilapidated a condition to bear her weight. He therefore insisted on trying them by blows with a stick, and on being the first to descend; but, except for the dust, and a confined smell, they appeared as if they might have been in daily use. Down some twenty feet they descended, Geoffrey leading, and carrying the lamp, Kate breathless with excitement, yet talking as fast as possible, explaining the secret entrance and its former object. Soon they found themselves stopped; the passage was filled with rubbish; from this part they must depend on their friends outside. And hark! even now they could distinguish a dull, thumping noise. Dick was at his work in the midnight; at every blow deliverance was coming nearer. According to Kate’s direction, he measured with some cord the distance from the foot of the steps to the obstruction, in order that Dick, who knew exactly the length of the passage when it was first made, might be able to judge whether it were possible to remove the rocks and earth. They then returned to tell the news to Hubert. He was suffering from great oppression and exhaustion, so that he did not appear either as surprised or as delighted as they supposed he would. His breath came in hard, short gasps, and Kate seated herself so that his head could rest on her shoulder, while Geoffrey bathed his face and moistened his parched lips. "Sing to me, Kate--the song you sang the other night about Jesus." "I will," she replied. And her voice, though at first trembling and husky with emotion, soon rose, as she became roused with her theme, to that clear, calm tone which is so soothing to the sick. She sang a Latin hymn, written by a monk in a far southern land, but sounding none the less sweet to those three Lollard children in their cold and gloomy dungeon. "Jesu dulcis memoria Dans vera cordi gaudia; Sed super mel et omnia Ejus dulcis præsentia. "Nil cantitur suavius, Nil auditur jocundius, Nil cogitatur dulcius, Quam Jesus, Dei Filius. "Jesus, spes poenitentibus, Quam pius es petentibus, Quam bonus te quærentibus, Sed quis invenientibus!