darkness
that enveloped him, and felt the damp mould beside him,--above--below.

For one horrible instant he recalled a sickening story of a man who was
negligently buried alive. He had always believed that this was only a
fireside fiction invented in the security of the chimney corner; but was
it to have a strange confirmation in his own fate? He was pierced with
pity for himself, as he heard the despair in his voice when he sent
forth a wild, hoarse cry. What a cavernous echo it had!

Again and again, after his lips were closed, that voice of anguish rang
out, and then was silent, then fitfully sounded once more on another
key. He strove to rise, but the earth on his breast resisted. With a
great effort he finally burst through it; he felt the clods tumbling
about him; he sat upright; he rose to his full height; and still all was
merged in the densest darkness, and, when he stretched up his arms as
high as he could reach, he again felt the damp mould.

The truth had begun vaguely to enter his mind even before, in shifting
his position, he caught sight of a rift in the deep gloom, some fifteen
feet above his head. Then he realized that at the moment of the flash of
lightning, unmindful of his footing, he had strayed aside from the path,
stumbled, fallen, and, as it chanced, was received into one of those
unsuspected apertures in the ground which are common in all cavernous
countries, being sometimes the entrance to extensive caves, and which
are here denominated "sink-holes."

These cavities were exceedingly frequent in the valley, on the boundary
of which Thad lived, and his familiarity with them did away for the
moment with all appreciation of the perplexity and difficulty of the
situation. He laughed aloud triumphantly.

Instantly these underground chambers broke forth with wild, elfish
voices that mimicked his merriment till it died on his lips. He
preferred utter loneliness to the vague sense of companionship given by
these weird echoes. Somehow the strangeness of all that had happened to
him had stirred his imagination, and he could not rid himself of the
idea that there were grimacing creatures here with him, whom he could
not see, who would only speak when he spoke, and scoffingly iterate his
tones.

He was faint, bruised, and exhausted. He had been badly stunned by his
fall; but for the soft, shelving earth through which he had crashed, it
might have been still worse. He could scarcely move as he began