impenetrable darkness--and that was bad
enough. I recalled to mind how I had gone through tunnels--this very one
among others--in a comfortable lighted carriage, and had drawn up the
window, sharply and suddenly, to keep out the stale, poisonous air; and
this was the atmosphere I was to breathe for the next hour! I shuddered
at the prospect. But it was not long before I was forced to acknowledge
that it was the darkness quite as much as the stifling air which was
affecting me. I had never been fond of the dark in my earliest days,
and now it seemed as if the strange, wild fancies of my childhood were
forcing themselves upon me, and I felt that, if only for an instant, I
must have light of some sort; so, standing still, I took from my pocket
a box of vestas, and struck one. Holding the little match carefully,
cherishing it with my hand, I gazed about me. How horrible it all
looked! Worse, if possible, in reality than in imagination. The outline
of the damp, mildewy wall was just visible in the feeble, flickering
light. On the brickwork close to me I could see a coarse kind of fungus
growing, and there was the silver, slimy trace of slugs in all
directions; I could fancy, too, the hundred other creeping things that
were about. As the match died out, a noise among the stones near the
wall caused me hastily to strike another, just in time to see a large
rat whisk into its hole.

[Illustration: "HOLDING THE LITTLE MATCH CAREFULLY, I GAZED ABOUT ME."]

A miner, a plate-layer--in fact, anyone whose avocations took them
underground--would have laughed to scorn these childish fears; but the
situation was so new to me, and also I must confess that I am naturally
of a nervous, imaginative turn of mind. Still, I was vexed with myself
for my cowardly feelings, and started on my walk again, trying not to
think of these gloomy surroundings, but drew a picture of my home,
wondering how Mary was, if she was well enough to be told of my coming,
and was looking out for me. Then I dwelt upon the satisfaction with
which I should enter the express, at the junction, feeling that the
troubles of the evening had not been in vain. After a while, when these
thoughts were somewhat exhausted, and I felt my mind returning to the
horrors of the present moment, I tried to look at it all from a
different point of view, telling myself that it was an adventure which I
should live to pride myself upon. Then I recalled to mind things I had
read of subter