severe blow. However, keep up your courage,
we cannot be very much longer now."

Once more they continued their way in silence, the ground sloping gently
downwards all the while, as they could tell notwithstanding the
darkness; and still no welcome ray of daylight appeared in the distance
to tell them that they were approaching their journey's end.

At length a vague and terrible fear began to make itself felt in Lance's
own mind. Recalling the incidents of their inward journey, he tried to
reckon the time which they had occupied in passing from the open air
along the gallery into the great cavern, and he considered that they
could not possibly have been longer than twenty minutes, probably not as
long as that. But it seemed to him that they had been groping there in
the intense darkness for two hours at least! No, surely it could not be
so long as that; the darkness made the time lag heavily. But if they
had been there only _one_ hour, they ought by this time to have reached
daylight once more, slowly as they had been moving. Surely they had
not--oh, no, it was not possible--it _could not_ be possible--and yet--
merciful God! what if they _had_ by some dreadful mischance _lost their
way_.

The strong man felt the beads of cold perspiration start out upon his
forehead as the dreadful indefinable haunting fear at length took shape
and presented itself before his mind in all its grisly horror. He had
faced Death often enough to look him in the face now or at any time
without fear; but to meet him _thus_--to wander on and on in the thick
darkness, to grope blindly along the walls of this huge grave until
exhaustion came and compelled them to lie down and die--never to look
again upon the sweet face of nature--never again to have their eyes
gladdened by the blessed light of the sun or the soft glimmer of the
star-lit heavens--to vanish from off the face of the earth, and to pass
away from the ken of their friends, leaving no sign, no clue of their
whereabouts or of their fate--oh, God! it was too horrible.

Not for himself; no, if it were God's will that thus he must die he had
courage enough to meet his fate calmly and as a brave man should. Thank
God, he had so lived that, let death come upon him never so suddenly, he
could not be taken unawares. Lance Evelin was by no means a saint; he
knew it and acknowledged it in this dread hour; but he had always
striven honestly and honourably to do his duty, whatever it