n his fright, as he gradually made his
way into the dripping cavern, getting narrower and lower as he
proceeded, he at last, after stumbling prayerfully along for about a
hundred and fifty yards, came to a loose pile of stones. Here opened
another low narrow fissure on the left, and, in some doubt, he was about
to enter; but the noise he made by stepping on a stone was answered by
the hissing warning of a serpent, and the scared padre fell back at his
full length in a pool of stagnant slimy water.

"_O Madre di Dios!_ I am stung by a cobra! Holy Virgin! my new cassock
ruined too! _Ave Maria!_ light me out of this abode of the devil!"

Slowly recovering, however, from his fright, he once more regained his
feet, and, after a few steps, which he was obliged to accomplish by
scraping his crown against the jagged rocks above, his outstretched
hands touched an iron-bound door.

"_Gracias a Dios!_ Thanks be to all the saints, I am here at last; but,
alas! curses on me, I shall be obliged to return by the same path unless
my son allows me to escape by the casa."

Cautiously searching with his fingers as he muttered these words, he
touched a bolt, and, grasping it with both hands, drew it partly out
like the knob of a bell. Then, placing his ear to the door, he presently
heard a rattling, creaking noise, as if a beam of timber, with pulley
and chain, was being raised from behind the entrance. When the sound
ceased the door yielded to the padre's sturdy shoulder, and there was
just room to admit his portly body. Here the passage was wider, the rock
evidently chiseled away by the hands of man, and on one side was an
artificial chamber, blasted out of the solid rock, with a narrow door
with heavy iron bolts on the outside. At this opening the padre paused
and listened. No sound caught his ear at first, but as he clutched the
bolt and it grated back in its bands, he was saluted by such a volley of
frightful curses as to make him start back and cross his ample breast.
It was the voice of Master Gibbs, lying there on a low iron settle in
the noisome dungeon, with not a ray of light to cheer him, and only a
jug of water and some weevily biscuit to save him from starvation. All
through the day and during the long, long hours of the awful night, in
pain and suffering from his lopped-off limb and bruises, had he lain on
his hard bed with clenched hands, blaspheming and impotently raging in
his agony and despair. No prayer, however, daw