"Yes, it is the last passage: the beech-nuts are buried under the snow, and the seeds also. Well, then, look! there are more men over there than birds in this pass. All the same, Jean-Claude, we will get over them, so long as every one bears a hand in it! Hexe-Baizel, light the lantern: I am going to show Hullin our supplies of powder and lead." Hexe-Baizel made a face at this proposition. "For twenty years," said she, "no one has gone into the cave. He can surely believe our word. We believe, for our part, that he will pay us. I will not light the lantern--no, indeed!" Marc, without saying anything, put out his hand and caught up a cudgel from the pile of wood; thereupon the old woman darted into the nearest hole like a weasel, and, two seconds later, came out with a big horn lantern, which Divès quietly lit at the fire on the hearth. "Baizel," said he, replacing the stick in its corner, "thou must know that Jean-Claude is an old friend of my childhood, and that I confide much more in him than in thee, old wench; for wert thou not afraid of being hanged the same day as myself, I should long ago have been swinging to a rope's end. Come, Hullin, follow me." They went out, and the smuggler, turning to the left, walked straight toward the chasm, which projected over the Valtin two hundred feet in the air. He pushed aside the branches of a little oak, which had its roots down below, put forth his leg, and disappeared as though pitched into the abyss. Jean-Claude shuddered, but directly after he saw, against the side of the rock, the head of Divès, who called to him,--"Hullin, put out thy hand to the left--there is a hole. Stretch thy leg out boldly--thou wilt feel a step, and then turn around." Master Jean-Claude obeyed, with some trepidation. He could feel the hole in the rock, he found the step, and turning slightly, was face to face with his comrade in a sort of arched niche, evidently abutting on a sally-port in times past. At the end of the niche there was a low vault. "How the devil didst thou discover that?" exclaimed Hullin, much astonished.