"Fear not, lady," replied the gentleman to whom she spoke; "I know him, although he does not know me, and you may trust to him in all faith." Again they proceeded in silence; and at the bottom of the steps they found another door, which led them into a long vaulted passage. At first it was cased with masonry, and a pavement was beneath their feet; but at the end of twenty or thirty yards the masonry ceased, and the torch carried by Lord Brian Fitzwalter showed that they were passing under the arch of a sort of rude cave, occasionally supported by brickwork, but not sufficiently so to prevent large masses of the earth and stones from falling down and obstructing the way. At the end of near two hundred yards more the monk turned towards the baron, saying, "Here you must put out the light, but lead her majesty gently forward, for the road is rough and dangerous." Lord Brian obeyed at once, and extinguished the torch against the wall of the vault, if wall it could indeed be called. He then led on the empress by the hand, while the monk went before, directing them upon their way; and presently after the faint blue light of the moonbeams were seen glimmering at some distance before them. "Now be silent as death," said the monk; "for, when we issue forth from this place, we are within a hundred yards of the tent of William of Ipres. When we are among the bushes at the mouth, stop, and let me go on first. You will see exactly the course that I take, and, if I am not seen in this gray gown, you, covered entirely in white, may well escape." A few steps more brought the whole party to a spot where a number of dry hawthorn bushes had gathered themselves into a hollow in the ground, completely concealing the mouth of the cavern or vault by which they had issued forth from the Castle of Oxford. That hollow had been part of some ancient Saxon, or, perhaps, Roman camp; and it extended some way in the form of a narrow ravine. The depth, indeed, except where the hawthorn bushes were, was very little; but it still afforded some shelter from the eyes of any of the enemy's soldiers who might have been near; nor was some shelter unnecessary; for at that moment the empress and her attendants had already passed the outer guards of Stephen's army, and were, in fact, half way through his camp.