turned to the door by which he had come in. There were two doors, side
by side, carved with straight lilies, and between them a panel wrought
with the griffin and the seven roses enwreathed. He pressed his finger
in the heart of the seventh rose, hardly hoping that the panel would
move, and indeed it did not; and he was about to seek for a secret
spring among the lilies, when he perceived that one of the doors wrought
with these had opened itself a little. So he passed through it and
closed it after him.

"I must guard my treasures," he said. But when he had passed through the
door and closed it, and put out his hand to raise the tattered tapestry
that covered it from without, his hand met the empty air, and he knew
that he had not come out by the door through which he had entered.

When the lantern was lighted, it showed him a vaulted passage, whose
floor and whose walls were stone, and there was a damp air and a
mouldering scent in it, as of a cellar long unopened. He was cold now,
and the room with the wine and the treasures seemed long ago and far
away, though but a door and a moment divided him from it, and though
some of the wine was in his body, and some of the treasure in his hands.
He set about to find the way to the quiet night outside, for this
seemed to him a haven and a safeguard since, with the closing of that
door, he had shut away warmth, and light, and companionship. He was
enclosed in walls once more, and once more menaced by the invading
silence that was almost a presence. Once more it seemed to him that he
must creep softly, must hold his breath before he ventured to turn a
corner--for always he felt that he was not alone, that near him was
something, and that its breath, too, was held.

So he went by many passages and stairways, and could find no way out;
and after a long time of searching he crept by another way back to come
unawares on the door which shut him off from the room where the many
lights were, and the wine and the treasure. Then terror leaped out upon
him from the dark hush of the place, and he beat on the door with his
hands and cried aloud, till the echo of his cry in the groined roof
cowed him back into silence.

Again he crept stealthily by strange passages, and again could find no
way except, after much wandering, back to the door where he had begun.

And now the fear of death beat in his brain with blows like a hammer. To
die here like a rat in a trap, never to see the sun a