bottom of the underground prison.

We plodded on for about an hour, then stopped simultaneously. At first I
thought that the horror of the situation had affected my brain, but the
fact that Holman had stopped abruptly at the same moment as I did choked
back the cold fear that had rushed upon me. I was not insane! Holman was
listening too! I seemed to feel that the tiny thread of sound which had
set my pulses beating madly had also keyed him up to the highest
tension.

After a minute of intense silence he put a question.

"Did you hear anything?"

"Did you?" I stammered.

"Are we mad, Verslun?" he asked hoarsely. "I thought--" He stopped and
moved close to me. I heard his quick breathing as he groped to find me.

"Verslun, did you hear?" he whispered, gripping my arm. "I heard her
speak."

"I thought I did," I breathed. "Perhaps--perhaps it was an echo."

For a few minutes we stood, our ears searching for the sound that had
disturbed us. We seemed afraid to call out--afraid to quench the little
spark of hope which had suddenly flared up in the despair that filled
our breasts. We knew that our ears had lied, and we tried to lengthen
the thrill by remaining perfectly silent.

The sound came again, and Holman sent a wild cry into the night that
hemmed us in. We were not insane! The spark of hope blazed as we rushed
headlong forward. The silvery voice of Barbara Herndon had come to us
again through the terrible gloom!

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXI

TOGETHER AGAIN

It is impossible to set down any statement that will enable the reader
to form a mental picture of the meeting which took place in that spot of
eternal night. Hands groped for hands in the darkness, and sobs and
cries and words of comfort went out into the silence. Edith and Barbara
Herndon wept, the Professor shrieked out denunciations of Leith, and
Holman and I were nearly choked by the lumps that rose in our throats.

Explanations came in broken sentences. The Professor's anger prevented
him from giving the story in detail, and the girls were not in a
condition to give a lucid account of their sufferings since the night
we had left them to investigate the light in the hills. We gathered from
the hysterical utterances, however, that Leith had rushed them to the
hills on hearing from the escaped dancer that we had dodged the fate he
intended for us when he had dispatched us to the table of the centipede.
The reduction in his bodyguard caused h