They found a very good path, however, and were able to proceed without difficulty. Up--up--up, the gradual slope, Cordelia judged, very nearly half a mile--and then they stopped; and from the change in the feeling of the air she was confident they had entered one of the caves, which she had several times visited in company with Percy Maitland. She wondered could it be that into which she and her friends had looked a few days before from the end of the subterranean passage they had explored. If it should so prove, then she might be taken into a place not unknown to her. She was destined, however, to a disappointment of which she had not dreamed. She heard words spoken between her captors, and presently she heard a sound as of the very slight creaking of a heavy door on its hinges. She knew that a passage had been opened before her by the sudden sweeping of a current of air on her face; and a few moments afterward, she was again led forward, being caused to stoop as she advanced. If she could have whispered, unheard by others, to Mary, she would have said: “We are passing through an aperture in the wall where we stopped on our recent voyage of discovery. This is the very wall in which we found the crevice through which we looked into the outer cave.” When they had all passed through she distinctly heard the way closed behind them; and shortly thereafter they moved on again, Cordelia smelling the fumes of a burning candle or lamp. She was confident--she felt that she knew--that they were now in a place which she had visited once before; yet, ere long, she met with something that confounded her. They had gone perhaps a hundred yards beyond the point where she had stooped in passing, when they came to a halt, and pretty soon she heard on the left hand another sound, like the swinging of a ponderous mass on hinges or on a pivot, and there was, moreover, a peculiar grating sound as though one surface of stone had come in contact with another in motion. “Now, my lady, this way. You will have to stoop a little.” They had turned squarely to the left, and, as he spoke, Tryon placed his hand on Cordelia’s head, causing her to stoop considerably lower than before. She made no resistance whatever, but kept her ears open and every sense she could use keenly alert. She heard the closing of the way behind her, and when she next stood erect she felt that she was treading on something like a carpet. At all events it was not the bare rock. She was conducted a short distance further, then caused to sit, and the hoodwink was removed from her eyes. The light of two or three small waxen tapers was not sufficient to dazzle her sight; but sufficient to reveal to her what manner of place she was in. It was a cavern, very nearly square in form; the walls seamed and uneven, but not ragged; the roof very high and quaintly arched, that is, it was a one-sided arch, like the half of a ship-roofed house.