There was no doubt about it. We had never effected, had never thought to effect, in the litter of dead stuff and bramble, so complete a concealment of our passage therethrough, for our ecstasy had taken no account at the moment of the rending evidences of our adventure which we were leaving behind us. Now, all trace of such was gone, obliterated, had been cunningly effaced and built in with other litter torn from the thicket elsewhere. The deadly spot was returned, to all appearance, to its wonted condition. “Won’t that do?” I whispered, gulping. “We needn’t look any further.” “We need,” returned Harry, short and grim. “Who’s to know, if we don’t, that he found his way down?” “What does it matter if he did or didn’t? This shows plains enough that he saw us come out.” “But it doesn’t show that he knows what we know.” “Harry!” He was pulling at the dead stuff as I shook out his name. A great pad of it came bodily away in his hands, revealing a savage gap behind--a hole torn and trodden beyond anything that we had made. “Harry!” I whispered again. “Supposing--supposing he should be down there now!” Nothing would persuade or deter him. He broke from me, and was in while I spoke; and I had in decency to follow. Now, if more proof were needed, here it was in the black rent at our feet. It was flagrantly enlarged from our memory of it by the forced passage of a huger body. It offered no difficulty of descent, and Harry let himself down into it cautiously, but without hesitation. “Wait,” he muttered, as he disappeared, “while I light up.” He had brought matches and candles with him; but he paused a moment to listen before he fetched them out. Not a sound reached us. The hill, inside and out, was wrapped in deadliest silence. The next instant a soft glow spread itself below me, and I went down into it, tingling with the horror of what it should reveal. Not a sound; not even the snarl of the badger, which I believe I should have welcomed. The brute, scared out of his security, I think, had betaken himself to other quarters. We reached the floor, and crept on. Again the dead came about us; but now, knowing and holding the road to flight, I could recover nothing of the sad appeal to comradeship with which they had before greeted me. They were terrors apart: ghastly chuckling grotesques without name in the kind world I had left. I hated them as they hated me. Suddenly Harry uttered a little cry, and, stooping, rose again with some object in his hand. “Look!” he whispered, and held it to the light. It was the bowl, broken off short, of a blackened death’s-head pipe, such as was familiar to us in the lips of Joel Rampick. Do you know what the French call a _pièce de conviction_? Here it was, and we needed nothing further. He had been here, and he shared our secret. What was he going to do? CHAPTER VIII. THE FEAST OF LANTERNS.