He had no doubt that the hours of the night were now stealing on, and that long ere this his absence must have been discovered, and speculation would be rife. He had his watch, but he was in utter and blackest darkness, and his box of cigar lights having dropped from his pocket he had no means of consulting the dial. He could but lie there in great pain and passive misery--a misery that seemed so unnatural that it was like a nightmare, an unreality, that must pass away as suddenly as it had come upon him. How terrible and indescribable, however, grew his aching thoughts as the weary time went on! He might die of cold, of hunger, of agony--die within a few yards of his own hearthstone--die thus under his father's roof, and close by where at that very moment the whole family were a prey to bewilderment and distress by his sudden disappearance! Oh, it was all too maddening to think of. So there he could but lie, buried, immured, entombed in darkness; chill as death, not a breath of pure air in his nostrils; not the faintest glimmer of light, and no human sound in his ears. As the hours crept on he could scarcely distinguish waking from sleeping, a dream from reality; and at times all seemed to become chaos, and he could think of nothing unless it were a buzzing in his head and the acute agony of his broken arm. Anon he would utter a feeble shout for 'help,' but his own voice seemed to return to him; beyond the walls that enclosed him it would not go. He knew that there are situations in life incident to misery and painful excitement, when the human machinery by the rapidity of mental action is worn out sooner than its alloted time, and he began to consider how long it was possible to exist without food or water. Wearily, agonisingly the hours dragged on. By this time he was certain that night had passed and day had come again; and what must the thoughts of his people be? Inquiries and searches would be made he knew, but who would ever dream of searching for him where he was _then_. He had not yet begun to suffer from hunger, but he had a considerable thirst, and hunger would come too. He thought of all he had read of the endurance of men on rafts and in open boats at sea; of entombed miners buried deep in the bowels of the earth, and his hair seemed to bristle up at the recollections. Hunger, thirst, and an unknown death--or death at such craven hands. 'Oh, God,' he moaned, 'will aid never--never come?' In that gruesome place and time there occurred to him--ghastly memory!--thoughts of the unknown and forgotten dead whose matted bones had been found in it by antiquarian explorers, as he had mentioned to Holcroft--the remains of unfortunate creatures flung in there by his forefathers. Could it be that this unlooked-for fate of his was to be a species of expiation for them? And was he to die now by this death, when life had become to him so much dearer than ever?