ht, or so he supposed,
for all was darkness about him, save for such imperfect illumination as
came from a small wood fire which flickered and crackled cheerfully in
one corner of the apartment in which he found himself. The apartment!
Nay, it was far too large, much too spacious in every dimension, to be a
room in an ordinary house, and those walls--or as much as could be seen
of them in the faint, ruddy glow of the firelight--were altogether too
rough and rugged to have been fashioned by human hands, while the roof
was so high that the flickering light of the flames was not strong
enough to reach it. It was a cavern, without doubt, and Harry began to
wonder vaguely by what means he had come there. For, upon awakening,
his mind had been in a state of the most utter confusion, and it was not
until he had lain patiently waiting for his ideas to arrange themselves,
and had thereby come to the consciousness that he was aching in every
bone and fibre of his body, while the latter was almost entirely swathed
in bandages, that the recollection of his adventure returned to him.
Even then the memory of it was but a dreamy one, and indeed he did not
feel at all certain that the entire incident was not a dream from
beginning to end, and that he should not presently awake to find himself
on the cot in his tent, with the cold, clear dawn peering in past the
unfolded flap, and another day's arduous work before him. But he
finally concluded that the fire upon which his eyes rested was too real,
and, more especially, that his pain was too acute and insistent for him
to be dreaming. Then he fell to wondering afresh how in the name of
fortune he had found his unconscious way into that cave and upon the
pallet which supported him.

The fire was the only thing in the cavern that was distinctly visible;
certain objects there were here and there, a vague suggestion of which
came and went with the rise and fall of the flame, but what they were
Harry could not determine. There was, among other matters, an object on
the far side of the fire, that looked not unlike a bundle of rags; but
when Escombe, in attempting to turn himself over into a more comfortable
position, uttered an involuntary groan as a sharp twinge of pain shot
through his anatomy, the bundle stirred, and instantly resolved itself
into the quaintest figure of a little, old, bowed Indian woman that it
is possible to picture. But, notwithstanding her extreme age and
apparen