a devout believer in
all such things.

"I've never seen the ghost of one," said Uncle George, with a laugh. "Here,
Phil! Take this!" and he handed me from his pocket an old flint-lock
pistol, of which I knew he had a pair. "You won't need it, but it makes one
feel bolder to carry it. If you see any ghosts, blaze away at them, and if
you hit them we'll nail their bodies up outside to scare away the rest."

Then, still laughing, to cheer us, I think, they bade us good-bye and went
off down the tunnel.

Carette was already spreading out the hay, which Uncle George and my
grandfather had got through the narrow ways with difficulty. Their voices
died away and we were alone, and I was so heavy that, from sitting on the
hay, I rolled over on it, and was asleep before I lay flat.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HOW LOVE COULD SEE IN THE DARK

Carette says I slept through three days and nights, but that is only one of
her little humours. When I woke, however, I was in infinitely better case
than before, and as she herself was fast asleep she may have been so all
the time.

It was quite dark. The candle had either burned out or she had extinguished
it. But in the extraordinary silence of that still place I could hear her
soft breathing not far away, and I lay a long time listening to it. It was
so calm and regular and trustful, as though no harmful and threatening
things were in the world, that it woke a new spirit of confident hope in
me, and I lay and listened, and thought sweet warm thoughts of her.

It seemed a long time, and yet not one whit too long, before the soft
breathing lost its evenness, and at last I could not hear it at all, and
knew she was waking. And presently she stirred, and after a time she said
softly--

"Phil ... are you awake?"

"Yes, my dear," I said, sitting up, and feeling first for her, for love of
the feel of her, and then in my pockets for my flint and steel.

"How still it is, and how very dark!" she whispered.

"I'll soon see how you're looking;" and my sparks caught in the tinder and
I lit a candle.

"You slept very sound," said she, blinking at the light.

"I had not slept for nearly ninety hours, and they had held more for me
than any ninety weeks before. But it was rude of me to go off like that and
leave you all alone."

"You could no more help it than I can help being very hungry. You have
slept three days and three nights, I believe. I wonder George Hamon is not
back for us."