Mistress Annan darted into the room unobtrusively, but looking like an elderly Scotch ghost in cap and spectacles, and began chafing her master's cold hands. Andrew would see it out to the end. "If he be there, and if they seize him, I will strike one of them down for him," thought the lad. The end, the end was at hand--life or death in it! "Works like a charm!" cried Jermain, now quite forgetting his fit of passion in the indulgence of curiosity. "There, we can pass! Ugh! What a stinking hole!" The lever, to outside persuasion, offered no reluctance to move. The door, truly, was wide open. Blackness of darkness--a rush of chill, malodorous wind. But no outrushing or defiant figure! "Give me one candle, boy," said Jermain--"hold the other before us. So. Watch well your feet, lads. These odd nooks often have holes and traps in their floors." With these words he stepped inside the Nest. Face the worst, within that pit of gloom, Andrew must. But he contrived, in obeying the command to accompany the three, audaciously to stumble against the captain on the very sill. The latter's taper was thereby cleverly dashed from the candlestick. It rolled to some dusty nook quite beyond their feet. "Awkward lout!" exclaimed Jermain; "but never mind; one candle shall serve." Making even it waver as much as he could (a process very easy in the state of his nerves) they advanced well within the Nest, Jermain and the others more awed each step by the dismalness of the retreat, but all talking loudly. No Lord Armitage at bay, desperate, yet faced them. And they moved on--on--now to the very end of the narrow apartment, where were placed the mothy stag-skins and the two stools. Everything seemed undisturbed, as if during the lapse of decades. "Well, 'tis a dull discovery after all, so far, I admit," said Jermain, peering now to the right, now to the left, or glancing toward the cornice, all a black void some twenty-five feet overhead, in such wretched illumination. "Not worth while to have so hot a question with--ha, ha--friend Boyd, over it! Yes, here we are at its end, I declare. Nothing beyond this dead wall, of course. Look, Roxley, how rough the courses are--how strong." "There seems to be a glim of light somewhere there," Dawkin remarked, pointing up to the square aperture previously mentioned. "But 'tis a vile den for any poor wretch to be shut into. Plenty snug enough for that Highland dog, though." "Ay," replied Jermain, frowning, "provided it be secure. Let's back to look. Steady--beware of this uncertain floor. Dawkin, thou wilt need all Andrew's candle-light for thine own share, thanks to the last two glasses I filled thee."