if I were to
reach the _chateau_ that night.

But how?

I might have wandered for an indefinite time among those caves before
striking the road. That I was off the track now seemed certain, for it
was obvious that no sleigh could pass through those walls. The thin
drift of snow that had covered the ground was almost melted, but enough
remained to have showed the pad-prints of the dog, if it had passed
that way.

There was none; nor were there tracks of sleigh runners, which would,
at least, have scored them in the sandy ooze along the bed of the
rivulet.

I had evidently then strayed from the right course while wandering
through the tunnel, and thus come by mischance into this blind alley.

I had noticed, as I have said, that the path narrowed considerably
during the last few hundred feet that I had traversed before I reached
this open place. In the darkness I might easily have debouched along
one of the numerous paths which, no doubt, existed all through the
interior of this limestone formation.

I started back in haste and reentered the tunnel again, striking a
match every few seconds, lighting each by its predecessor.

I had been travelling back for about ten minutes when I noticed at my
feet the charred stump of a match that I had thrown away some time
before. I looked around me and saw that I was again in the main road.
There were the faint depressions caused by the sleigh runners in the
soft stone, and the roof and side walls of the tunnel again stretched
away into the obscurity around me.

Satisfied that I had retraced my steps sufficiently far, I turned about
and began to proceed cautiously in the opposite direction, keeping this
time as far as possible to the right of the road instead of to the
left, as before. The box of matches which I had brought with me was
nearly exhausted, but, by shielding each one carefully, I was able to
examine my ground with fair assurance of my being in the right course.

A draft was now beginning to blow quite strongly inward, and this
convinced me that I was approaching the tunnel's end.

As I proceeded I kept looking to the left to endeavor to locate the
narrow passage into which I had strayed, but it must have been the
merest opening in the wall, so small that only a miracle of chance had
led me into it, for I saw nothing but the straight passage before me.

Presently I began to hear a murmur of water in the distance, and then a
faint flicker of light. The gr