he glanced quickly to right and left,
even holding up his lanthorn, fancying for the moment that he might
catch sight of some dried-up traces of the poor unfortunates who had
struggled on for days, as they had, and then sunk down to rise no more.

"How horrible!" he muttered; "and how can Joe lie there sleeping, when
perhaps our fate may be like theirs?"

But he had unconsciously started another train of thought which set him
calculating, and took his attention from the imaginary horrors which had
troubled him.

"Wandered about for days and days," he mused. "It seems like it, but
that's impossible. It can't be much more than one, or we couldn't have
kept on. We should have been starved to death. We couldn't have lived
on water."

He wiped his wet brow, and it seemed to him that the gallery they were
in was not so stifling and hot, unless it was that he had grown weaker.
Still one thing was certain; he could breathe more freely.

"Getting used to it," he thought; and, putting down the lanthorn, he
seated himself with his back close to the wall.

Joe slept heavily, and the lad looked at him enviously.

"I couldn't sleep so peaceably as that," he said half aloud. "How can a
fellow sleep when he doesn't know but what his father may be dying close
by from starvation and weakness. It seems too bad."

Gwyn opened the lanthorn and found that the candle was half burned down,
and for a moment he thought of setting up another in its place, for fear
he should go to sleep and it should burn out.

"Be such a pity," he said, "we don't want light while we're asleep; only
to wake up here in this horrible place is enough to drive anybody mad."

Then he closed the lanthorn again.

"I sha'n't go to sleep," he muttered. "In too much trouble." And he
began thinking in a sore, dreary way of his mother seated at home
waiting for news of his father and of him.

"It'll nearly kill her," he said. "But she'll like it for me to have
come here in search of poor dad. It would have been so cowardly if I
hadn't come, and she would have felt ashamed of me. Yes, she'll like my
dying like this."

He paused, for his thoughts made him ponder.

"We can't be going to die," he said to himself, "or we shouldn't be
taking it all so easily and be so quiet and calm. If we felt that we
really were going to die, we should be half mad with horror, and run
shrieking about till we dropped in a fit. No," he said softly, "it
isn't like that.