ar little faithful Nelly! don't run so fast. You were tired
almost to death when you came in from your first journey, and now you
set out immediately on this the moment I ask you to do it; but abate
your zeal, dear little friend, or you will not be able to hold out to
the end," said Sybil, sitting down and caressing her little dog while
they both rested.

When they re-commenced their journey, they found the passage growing
narrower, darker, and more tortuous than before. They were compelled to
move slowly and cautiously.

Sybil had already recognized the natural underground road by which she
had been brought to the robber's cave; but she did not know this portion
of it. So she supposed that she must have been brought through it while
in that state of unconsciousness into which she had fallen from terror
on first being seized by the masked and shrouded forms of the men who
had carried her off. She therefore hoped that she was near the outlet of
the subterranean passage.

But where that outlet might be, she could not guess. The last she
remembered before falling into that swoon of horror, was the vault of
the Haunted Chapel. The first she saw, on recovering herself, was the
middle of the subterranean passage. But whether that passage had started
from the vault, or whether the men had carried her any distance over the
upper earth, before descending into it, she had no means of knowing or
surmising. She must wait for the revelation at the end of this
underground road.

The end was fast approaching. Far ahead, a little, dim dot of gray light
kept dodging right and left before her eyes, following as it were the
abrupt turning of the passage. It drew nearer, nearer, and now at last
it was before her.

The little dog that had been trotting beside her mistress, now sprang
past her and began to dig away at the hole with her paws.

Sybil stooped down, and peered through it. By the early light, of the
now dawning day, she discerned a section of a foundation wall, that she
felt sure must be a part of the old vault under the Haunted Chapel.

The little dog now jumped through the hole, and turned around and pawed
and whimpered, as if inviting and expecting Sybil to follow her.

She understood the situation well enough now. She knew that this small
hole was the entrance from the underground passage into the vault, and
that it must have become partly filled up by the falling in of the
bricks and mortar at the blowing up of the