As the match burnt out she heard halting footsteps re-echoing down the passage, and, closing the knife, she slipped it into her jacket pocket and waited. He must have been a long way from her when she first heard him; the passage acting as a huge speaking-tube. “Are you all right, Leslie?” He was normal again. “I’m sorry I had to leave you, but this place rather rattles me, and I had to go along and see if I could find an exit.” “Where are we?” she asked. “I don’t know. I carried you down that wretched circular arrangement and you were fearfully heavy,” he added, so naïvely that the girl laughed for the first time in that period of horror. “Do you know, Leslie,” he squatted down on the floor by her side--“I have an idea. Do you remember those holes we looked through?” “Yes, I remember them,” she said, wondering what was coming next. “Do you know that they are placed in the side of a well of some kind?” Not a word about Dick. He had forgotten the rope cutting and the horror that followed. “Has it occurred to you,” he went on, “that the treasure may be at the bottom of that well? It only struck me a few minutes ago. If we could get out and have a talk with Dick, he’s such an ingenious devil that I’m sure he would find the opening of the well, which may be inside the old Abbey itself. Most of these mediæval buildings have a well in the centre and kept their water supply enclosed.” “You didn’t find an exit?” she asked. “No,” he said. “I got into a sort of labyrinth and I thought I should never get out again. Good heavens! Look at your feet!” They were indeed in a sorry plight, swollen and bleeding. In an instant he had pulled off his own shoes. “Put them on,” he said authoritatively, and when she demurred, he seized her foot and slipped her toes into the shoe. “I was a great runner in my day,” he said, with a hint of pride, “and barefooted running was my specialty--to use a horrible theatrical word.” The shoes were much too big for her, but the comfort of them after walking barefooted on that rough floor! “There’s one place I haven’t explored, and that is the little side passage to the left. There has been some sort of a fall there and the rock looks rotten. I don’t like to attempt an exploration. By the way, what made you faint?” he asked suddenly. “I don’t know--nerves, I suppose,” she said. It was useless and even dangerous to tell him of what had happened by the wall of the well. “I thought it might be that,” he said. “If you feel fitter now we’ll go along.” He walked ahead, switching his lamp on and off at intervals. He wanted to save his batteries, he told her, which had shown signs of running down. All the time he kept up an incessant chatter. He had plans about the future of the Abbey and grew enthusiastic when he expounded his scheme.