turning on a pair of heavy
rusty hinges it opened, and showed a flight of steps cut in the rock,
and leading downwards.

"Come along," he whispered to Tom, "we shall soon solve the mystery."

He led, Tom following, and holding the lantern with a torch ready to
light at the end of his hook arm, while he held a pistol in his other
hand. At first they descended by very steep steps cut in the rock, then
the passage was almost on a level and turned and twisted considerably,
showing that it had been formed in the first place by nature, and had
been simply enlarged by the hand of man.

Charley was, however, thinking all the time far more of little Margery,
and how frightened she must have been when carried along it, than of the
way in which the passage had been formed. He was expecting also every
instant to find himself confronted by a number of fierce smugglers, who
would naturally be exasperated at having their long-concealed haunt at
length discovered. There could be no longer any doubt as to who
represented the ghosts, nor how they had entered the Tower and so
speedily disappeared. The passage was somewhat slippery from the
moisture which here and there trickled through the rock, and was clearly
not often traversed, which it would have been had the vault above been
used as a store-house.

It was pretty evident from the words the smugglers had used that their
object was to get rid of the inhabitants of the Tower that they might
occupy the vaults as a store-house, and have free egress from it for
their goods. They had probably hoped, could they have attained their
object, to have baffled the revenue officers for years to come. They
must have felt that they had been completely defeated, and, either in
revenge or in the hopes of making some terms with Captain Askew, had
carried off Margery. Still, Charley could not believe, that, savage and
lawless as they might be, they would wish to injure the innocent little
girl, and was nearly sure that he was on the right track to recover her.

Charley now proceeded very cautiously, for he thought it possible that
the passage might lead to the edge of a precipice to be descended only
by a ladder, and an incautious step in advance might send him tumbling
headlong down; and he had the sense to know that people even when
engaged in the best of enterprises must guard against accidents and
failure, and that they have no right to expect success unless they do
their best to secure i