paused
at the entrance, and then, with a rustling of branches and snapping of
twigs, the faint light was suddenly shut off from outside, and we were
left in pitchy darkness. I heard the scraping of his knees as he
crawled up behind me.

'Go on until you come to a step down,' said he. 'We shall have more
room there, and we can strike a light.'

The ceiling was so low that by arching my back I could easily strike it,
and my elbows touched the wall upon either side. In those days I was
slim and lithe, however, so that I found no difficulty in making my way
onwards until, at the end of a hundred paces, or it may have been a
hundred and fifty, I felt with my hands that there was a dip in front of
me. Down this I clambered, and was instantly conscious from the purer
air that I was in some larger cavity. I heard the snapping of my
companion's flint, and the red glow of the tinder paper leaped suddenly
into the clear yellow flame of the taper. At first I could only see
that stern, emaciated face, like some grotesque carving in walnut wood,
with the ceaseless fishlike vibration of the muscles of his jaw. The
light beat full upon it, and it stood strangely out with a dim halo
round it in the darkness. Then he raised the taper and swept it slowly
round at arm's length so as to illuminate the place in which we stood.

I found that we were in a subterranean tunnel, which appeared to extend
into the bowels of the earth. It was so high that I could stand erect
with ease, and the old lichen-blotched stones which lined the walls told
of its great age. At the spot where we stood the ceiling had fallen in
and the original passage been blocked, but a cutting had been made from
this point through the chalk to form the narrow burrow along which we
had come. This cutting appeared to be quite recent, for a mound of
_debris_ and some trenching tools were still lying in the passage.
My companion, taper in hand, started off down the tunnel, and I followed
at his heels, stepping over the great stones which had fallen from the
roof or the walls, and now obstructed the path.

'Well,' said he, grinning at me over his shoulder, 'have you ever seen
anything like this in England?'

'Never,' I answered.

'These are the precautions and devices which men adopted in rough days
long ago. Now that rough days have come again, they are very useful to
those who know of such places.'

'Whither does it lead, then?' I asked.

'To this,' said h