It was a narrow one as it first offered--a mere beast-earth driven down between chance interstices in the ruins above to meet the stair-head. But all the time while we wrought at to enlarge it, the sweet light was stretched to us to comfort and inspire, and the smell of liberty came down more and more in draughts like wine, as if Harry with his strenuous hammer were tapping the very reservoir of day. The only fear was that, striking carelessly, he might loosen some poised mass, and bury us under an avalanche of stone. But luckily, both sunk vault and tumbled ruin had so well adjusted between them the balance of collapse that our puny grubbing was all insufficient to disturb it. For which, thank God! And tenfold for that glorious moment when, struggling and pushing up by way of the last of the littered steps, we shouldered and tore ourselves through into the mid-thicket of brambles by the fallen plinth, and felt the light of day, broken by the branches, burst over us like a salvo of resplendent rockets! CHAPTER V. A REAPPEARANCE. On the day following that of our adventure Harry was due at Yokestone. I had arranged to walk part of the way with him, for we had much and momentous matter to discuss--our discovery, and the responsibility, moral and legal, which it entailed upon us, to wit. But, to my disturbance, the morning found Uncle Jenico knocked up with a chill; and the dear soul’s hope that I would stay to keep him company was so patent, that I had not the heart to disoblige him. I just took an opportunity to run out and tell Harry I could not come, and to re-decide with him upon postponing all action until we could consider the matter in its every bearing; and then returned, very much depressed, I must own, to my duty. I don’t know if any suspicion of the past, any premonition as to the future was operating in the old man’s mind. Pure spirits, one must think, must be strangely sensitive to any disturbance in their moral atmosphere. He was certainly oddly solicitous about me, wistfully attentive, loth that I should leave him, and for my sake, not his own. But after dinner, as luck would have it, he fell asleep in his chair, and, restless beyond endurance, I took the chance to go for a stroll. Once outside the door, I hesitated. I had not yet slept soundly or exhaustively enough to shake off all the horror of our late experience. I dreaded to go by the hill; I dreaded to go by the beach; but at last the prospective quiet of the latter drew me, and I turned my face seawards. I had expected to find the shore deserted, and so, reaching the cliff edge, was put out a little to see a figure, that of a stranger, already down there before me. It went to and fro, this figure, on the fringe of the surf, thoughtfully, its head bent, its hands clasped behind its back--a lean, small old man, it seemed. But I observed it with unspeculative eyes, because of my pondering all the time, abstractedly and rather dismally, on the events of yesterday.