fancied that I heard the soft pattering of feet behind
me.

I halted and listened intently. I crouched against the wall and
waited. But I heard nothing now except the distant roaring of the
cataracts. How sweet they sounded now!

I listened intently, leaning against the wall and facing backward,
holding my sword ready to meet any intruder. But there was no sound
from within, except the soughing which one hears in a tunnel; and
satisfied at last that I had been the victim of an over-wrought
imagination, I pursued my course.

The light grew brighter, but very slowly, until all at once I saw what
seemed to be the gleam of an electric arc-light immediately ahead. It
dazzled and half blinded me.

I started backward; and then the noble morning star disclosed herself,
swinging in the sky like a blazing jewel in a translucent sea.

Before me was a projecting piece of rock, which had shut off the view,
and but for that warning star I must have gone to my death. For my
foot was slipping on ice--and I was clinging to the cliff-wall upon the
other side of the tiny platform, where I had stood with Pierre, and the
Old Angel thundered over me.

And, instead of noon, as I had thought it to be, it was only dawn, and
the distant sky was banded with faint bars of yellow and gold, and the
fresh morning air was in my nostrils.

I picked my way back, inch by inch, across the ice which coated the
rocky floor for a few yards within the tunnel, until I stood in safety
again.

The full purport of this discovery now came to me, and it filled me
with frantic joy. For, since the cave connected with that platform
beneath the cataract, it was evident that by crossing the ledge, a
dangerous but not precarious feat, I should enter the main tunnel again
and come out eventually beyond the hills, even allowing for a
preliminary blunder into the wrong track.

The greatest danger lay in the possibility of Leroux or his aids lying
in wait for me somewhere within the tunnel, and I had not much fear of
that, for I did not believe they suspected that our cave connected with
the main passage. It was more likely that they would wait in
Duchaine's room till hunger drove us out.

So I started back to Jacqueline. But I had not gone six paces before I
heard a scream that still rings in my ears to-day, and a shadow sprang
out of the darkness and rushed at me. It was old Charles Duchaine.
His white hair streamed behind him; his face bore an expre