I know not how it was that I seemed to forget that in less than two hours we must embark. The present adventure held me to the exclusion of all else. I stepped within the narrow passageway—crept within it, for I had to go on hands and knees. I had no light nor aught else to guide me; but if I thought at all it was that if the monk could come this way in safety, I could go as he had come. But to leave a gaping panel was not in my thoughts. Having entered I drew the panel to. Then feeling with my hands I came upon a lock. Had I moved it by my touch, or had it been left unlocked of design? There was no time for answering of riddles, and having pushed the panel to I turned to pursue the adventure. CHAPTER IV.—THE DEAD HAND. After a little I found that I could stand upright in the passage. Stretching up my hands I could feel a solid roof above my head. The walls on either side of me were of earth, held back by stout balks of timber. If one were to give way the passage had been a grave indeed; but so far as I could feel with my feet the clay had not fallen at all. Else indeed there could not have been so much air in the passage as to give me breath; and I breathed freely enough, albeit with a certain oppression, and a loathing of the dank smells. For a time the passage went down into the bowels of the earth as it seemed to me. I guessed by the direction it took from the dining-hall that it must grope under the graveyard—and thinking on this I realized how that indeed the wind that blew from it was a wind of death. And at that time I was too ignorant and too vain to rebuke myself by the thought that this was a burying-place of saints. Presently my foot stumbled against a step, and much relieved I was to find on ascending it that there was another step and yet another; for I liked not this burrowing among graves like the mole; and the steps seemed to promise a speedy end to my journey. Taking them in the dark there seemed to me a prodigious number of them; yet I was not gone very far when I perceived agreeably a lightening and sweetening of the air. I could have taken but a little while in coming, for I had met with no obstacles; yet it seemed long since the time I had plunged into that pit of blackness ere I came up against a stout door, with a grating in it, designed no doubt to give air to the passage. To my great joy it was held only by a latch, and even before I had made this happy discovery I felt the sweet air of heaven blow into my face; and I think I never before knew how sweet it tasted. Undoing the latch and drawing the door to me I stepped within a stone tower. The moon had arisen on the eastward side of the tower, and looking through the crumbling lancet window I saw below me, serene and beautiful, the quiet, terraced graveyard of St. Mary’s.