My hands shook so that I boggled three good matches in coaxing the wick to take; but I would not let Harry hold the candle, for fear that he might run ahead with it, and perhaps in some labyrinth of passages leave me to follow the wrong one. The flame caught at last, flared with a momentary brilliancy, and shrunk to a mere blink. It is the common way with candles, yet I know nothing more maddening in a nervous emergency. And if philosophy sneers over that statement, let it ponder, and be thankful but take no credit, because it had nothing whatever to do with the making of its own temperament. At length, after a moment of tension indescribable, the wicked little tongue stretched, and glowed steady; and I lifted it high, while we glared right and left. The cellar in which we found ourselves was, or had been till shorn of its seaward end, a four-square room, with Norman vaulting--crossed flat half-hoops of stone--going down into the corners. It was very small, and very low (the candle flame, as I lifted it, blackened the roof), and very massive; and because of the three, very ancient. Probably it had once been a death-chapel under some older foundation than the abbey, and connected only as a matter of piety with the newer crypts, which, to meet it, had been tunnelled eastwards, in a manner very unusual, from beneath the nave. But, so far as we could see, it was quite empty, and undamaged by the earthquake, or explosion. I waved the light to and fro. “Nothing here,” whispered Harry. “Let’s get on!” The black sewer faced us. There, we knew, was our way. If for a minute or two we hesitated to follow it, by so long was Providence our friend. For, indeed, we had never thought to take account of the stale, confined gases which for years must have been poisoning these glooms, and our delay gave the draught that we had created time to take effect. For draught there was, though we were unconscious of the significance of it when we saw the flame of our candle draw towards the tunnel. But in truth we had forgotten in our excitement all about the badger. At last we made a move, holding on to one another’s hands like Hansel and Gretel entering the witch’s forest. We reached the black mouth of the passage, and went in on tiptoe. It was arched, and high enough in its middle to enable one to walk erect; yet not so wide but that Harry must drop behind and follow me. I sniggered a little to feel him treading nervously on my heels, and the sense of laughter was like a tonic. If one touch of nature makes the world kin, it is surely the touch that tickles one under the fifth rib. The passage seemed to run on endlessly--just a high stone drain with a floor of hammered earth driving straight into the hill. No other diverged from it, nor did any ruin block our path; and we were beginning to move quite merrily, when suddenly the end came in a flight of half a dozen steps going down, and at the bottom a great door torn off its hinges and shivered into splinters.