ord invited them to remain and partake of 'something hot,' but
they declined this hospitality, and sallied forth into the street.

It was now about two o'clock, and snowing heavily. The stranger, placing
himself under the guidance of the boy, followed him around into Orange
street. Pausing before a steep cellar, exceedingly narrow, dark and
deep, the young thief whispered--

'This is the _forty-foot cave_--the entrance into the _dark vaults_.[1]
You have been down, I suppose?'

The stranger answered in the negative.

'Then come on, if you are not afraid,' said the boy--and followed by his
companion, he cautiously began to descend into the dark and dreary
chasm.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It is a fact by no means generally known that there was,
beneath the section of New York called the 'Five Points,' a vast
subterranean cavern, known as the _dark vaults_. There mysterious
passages run in many directions, for a great distance, far beneath the
foundations of the houses. Some have supposed that the place was
excavated in time of war, for the secretion of ammunition or stores,
while others think it was formerly a deep sewer of the city. In these
dark labyrinths _daylight_ never _shone_: an eternal night prevailed.
Yet it swarmed with human beings, who passed their lives amid its
unwholesome damps and gloomy horrors. It served as a refuge for
monstrous crimes and loathsome wretchedness. The Police rarely ventured
to explore its secret mysteries--for Death lurked in its dark passages
and hidden recesses. The horrors of this awful place have never
heretofore been thoroughly revealed; and now the author of this work
will, for the first time, drag forth the ghastly inmates of this
charnel-house into the clear light of day.]

CHAPTER VI

_The Dark Vaults--Scenes of Appalling Horror--The Dead Man--The
Catechism--arrangements for a Burglary._

Down, down, they went, far into the bowels of the earth; groping their
way in darkness, and often hazarding their necks by stumbling upon the
steep and slippery steps. At length the bottom of the 'forty-foot cave'
was reached; and the boy grasping the hand of his follower, conducted
him thro' a long and circuitous passage. Intense darkness and profound
silence reigned; but after traversing this passage for a considerable
distance, lights began to illumine the dreary path, and that indistinct
hum which proceeds from numerous inhabitants, became audible. Soon the
two explor