This anxiety dominated even his terror of being discovered by these rascals, although he knew they would have wrung his neck without a moment's compunction to prevent him from blabbing. He sprang up and stole tremulously off through the darkness, striving to rouse his fainting memory and his instinct for locality, and to find the window. How many times he circled around the dusky labyrinth he never knew. All at once he felt a great lightening of his spirits, for he saw suddenly before him a black oblong space which he instantly discerned to be a door. Noiselessly, lightly, he sped to the aperture to find himself in the dark corridor of the building. This passage, of course, followed the direction of the wall of the semicircular auditorium, but this fact was not apparent to Ned, except as revealed gradually by the sense of touch, for no longer did he have even the faint light of the remote windows above the gallery, and the darkness was intense, almost total, indeed. Sometimes a vague glimmer came from doors a bit ajar, and giving upon the dim auditorium within, but these occurred at long intervals, and looking fearfully over his shoulder he could not distinguish the portal by which he had entered. It was gone,--vanished in the gloom! As he stood gazing back for this one landmark, which he had thought he might keep as guide, he heard a sound in the utter silence that made him quail,--a regular throbbing beat which he recognized presently as the plunging of his own heart. He must needs have courage, he reasoned within himself, as he leaned back faint and tremulous against the wall, or he would perish here like a rat in a trap.