means of escape was simply a
step toward righting the mistake that had been made.

Then it was that Harvey asked suddenly, as if it was a matter of great
moment:

"Who knows whether it yet be day, or has the night come?"

As a matter of course we had lost all knowledge of time, shut up in that
cellar where no ray of light penetrated, sleeping and eating as our
desires prompted, and now the question had been raised I grew keen to
know whether another night had come, or if we had been there as
prisoners less than four and twenty hours.

"It was nearabout midnight when we came into this place," Hiram replied
to Harvey's question, as if still working out a problem in his mind. "We
spent much time with Master Lord; let us say until daybreak. Then we
slept, and the chances are it must have been near to another night fall
when we were awakened by a racket overhead. I'm allowing it was the next
night after our arrival, perhaps late in the evening, when our
double-faced host brought us the provisions, and that we most-like have
spent one entire night eating and working on the tunnel. Therefore to my
mind it is some time in the second day after our arrival. Surely it
cannot be very late in the night, else would Master Lord have returned."

All this seemed good reasoning, and yet now that we had seemingly
settled the matter, of what did it avail us? What mattered whether the
sun was shining, or the earth shrouded in darkness, so that we dared not
venture out in either case?

Hiram speedily settled this matter, as in fact he did every one we
discussed, by asking:

"What say you to my making our first venture through the secret passage
after that scoundrel who professes to be working in our interests,
visits us the next time?"

"Meaning that you would go out whether it was night or day?" Archie
asked.

"Surely not, lad; but I am allowing we can so far trust him as to take
for granted what he tells us as to the time. Now if I am guessing
rightly, he will come back in the evening, and there is no good reason
why he should not say what is o'clock when we put the question. It ought
to be possible for us to learn whether he goes to bed, or ventures out
again, and if it so chances that he turns in, I will try the secret
passage."

"When you made the holes in the floor for the purpose of hearing what
might be going on in the room above, did you realize that they would
serve to let him know what we are doing?" Harvey asked, and