e sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you, that I
cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries, but get on
your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber working my
altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."

Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly hustled us
through.

"Good-by--you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon us. We were
in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of the dank, foul air,
we heard bolts snap into place.

"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M. Etienne,
cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it is to throw them off
the scent should they track us."

I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same thought
which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her
beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days;
she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.

I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it
as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the
passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder.
There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something
swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and a
laugh from him.

"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, Felix; they don't bite." But I would not
go on till I had made sure, as well as I could without seeing, that the
cursed thing was not clinging on me somewhere.

We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our tread.
We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of Paris; and I
wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming and loving over our
heads. M. Etienne said at length:

"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the Seine."
But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere, I should not
greatly mind the Seine.

At this very moment M. Etienne clutched my arm, jerking me to a halt. I
bounded backward, trying in the blackness to discern a precipice yawning
at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low, tense voice. I perceived, far
before us in the gloom, a point of light, which, as we watched it, grew
bigger and bigger, till it became an approaching lantern.

"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. Etienne.

The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread; naturally he
did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him alone, but it was
hard t