two of the steps of the great staircase! they came through,
resting on the wall. That end of the chapel, then, adjoined the main
stair. Evidently, too, a door had been built up in the process of
constructing the stair. The chapel then had not been entered from that
level since the building of the stair. Originally there had, most
likely, been an outside stair to this door, in an open court.

After a little more examination, partial of necessity, from lack of
light, he was on his way out, and already near the top of the mural
stair, thinking of the fresh observations he would take outside in the
morning, when behind, overtaking him from the regions he had left, came
a blast of air, and blew out his candle. He shivered--not with the cold
of it, though it did breathe of underground damps and doubtful growths,
but from a feeling of its having been sent after him to make him go
down again--for did it not indicate some opening to the outer air? He
relighted his candle and descended, carefully guarding it with one
hand. The cold sigh seemed to linger about him as he went--gruesome as
from a closed depth, the secret bosom of the castle, into which the
light never entered. But, wherever it came from last, however earthy
and fearful, it came first from the open regions of life, and had but
passed through a gloom that life itself must pass! Could it have been a
draught down the pipe of the music-chords? No, for they would have
loosed some light-winged messenger with it! He must search till he
found its entrance below!

He crossed the little gallery, descended, and went again into the
chapel: it lay as still as the tomb which it was no more. He seemed to
miss the presence of the dead, and feel the place deserted. All round
its walls, as far as he could reach or see, he searched carefully, but
could perceive no sign of possible entrance for the messenger blast. It
came again!--plainly through the open door under the windows. He went
again into the passage outside the wall, and the moment he turned into
it, the draught seemed to come from beneath, blowing upwards. He
stooped to examine; his candle was again extinguished. Once more he
relighted it. Searching then along the floor and the foot of the walls,
he presently found, in the wall of the chapel itself, close to the
ground, a narrow horizontal opening: it must pass under the floor of
the chapel! All he saw was a mere slit, but the opening might be
larger, and partially covered b