“You are too careful of me, my lord,” said the old man, flinging his wet cloak over his shoulder. “A merciful Providence still grants me strength, that my white hairs belie, and I am used to rougher roads than you suppose. It is you, the son of a noble house, accustomed to tread only on polished marble or soft carpets....” “Nonsense--why, even this storm is nothing to speak of.” They turned eastwards, and leaving the high-road, soon reached a wooden bridge across the waters of the Almo,[351] a rivulet now swollen by the storm. From hence the path led them across the Via Latina and through a dense wood. The pine-tops sighed weirdly under the lashing wind that rocked and bowed them, while now and again, as one bough crashed against another, there was a sound as of distant axe-strokes. They first followed a foot-path, which crossed the wood in a south-easterly direction, but presently--about half way through the pine forest--their guide pushed aside the boughs of a sturdy laurel, that stood on the right side of the alley, and they plunged into the brushwood. Here another path was presently discernible, though overgrown by a seemingly impenetrable tangle of shrubs, and this presently brought them out close to a grass-grown mass of rocks. By walking round one of the huge boulders, they reached an opening into an old and long-disused stone-quarry. A low passage was visible, sloping down underground. “Here we are,” said Euterpe. A gleam from her lantern revealed a high-piled mass of dèbris. “I will go in first.” She placed her lantern, half open, on a shelf in the tufa rock, at such an angle as to light up the passage; then, stooping down, she disappeared in the doubtful shadow cast by a natural buttress on the rocky wall. Thrax, Quintus, and Blepyrus followed, the slave bringing the lantern in his hand. At the spot, where the flute-player had disappeared, the passage was cut in steps, which led abruptly downwards about thirty feet underground; then a broad and fairly lofty gallery ran about fifty paces on a level, opening into a cross gallery.