A secret door opened, revealing a narrow flight of stairs. Making a sign for his companions to follow, he descended. Down many narrow flights of stairs, through many winding labyrinths, along many dark passages, the sailors followed their leader, until far down in the deepest foundations of the castle they reached a large, circular stone crypt, with many rusted iron doors around it, leading into little dungeons. On one side of this horrible place was a rude stone altar with an iron crucifix. In the center was a block. It was probably a vault which in the old and dark ages had been used for a place of secret imprisonments, executions, and burials. Lord Vincent flashed his lantern around upon the scene and then went up to one of the grated doors, unfastened it, and entered the dungeon. It was a small stone cavity, a hard hole, where it seemed impossible for a human being to live and breathe for an hour. And yet poor old Katie, with the wonderful tenacity of life which belongs to the pure African, had clung to existence there ever since the hour when, seeming dead, she had been dragged from the apartments of Faustina to this hideous vault. So you see he had deceived Faustina into the belief that Katie had died in the vault from the effects of chloroform. By the dim light of the lantern her form could now be seen squatted in the corner of the dungeon. Her knees were drawn up, her arms folded on them, and her head buried in them. She had fallen asleep; probably after long watching and fasting and the effects of mental and physical exhaustion. The entrance of the viscount did not awaken her. "This is the woman; I was obliged to confine her here for a violent assault upon a lady of my family. She is fast asleep; but to attempt to remove her might awaken her; so we will make all sure by sending her into a deeper sleep," whispered the viscount, drawing from his pocket first a bottle of chloroform and then a piece of sponge, which he proceeded to saturate with the liquid. But it required tact to apply it. Katie's face was buried in her arms. So he first put the lantern out of the way where it could not shine upon her, and then went and gently lifted Katie's head with one hand while he applied the sponge near her nose with the other. "Yes, chile; I tink so too--my ladyship--whited saltpetre--Bottomy Bay," muttered Katie, who was sleeping the deep sleep of her race, and probably dreaming of her lady and her lady's dangers. The viscount laid her head back on his own breast, put the chloroform sponge to her nose, and fitted his own slouch hat over her face in such a manner as to confine the fumes. Poor old Katie's wide nostrils soon inhaled the whole of the deadly vapor, which acted with unusual power upon her exhausted frame, so that she speedily lay as one dead. "Take her up! make haste! There is a shorter way out of this vault; but I could not bring you here by it because it is fastened on this side," said the viscount, leaving the den.