gs in the
fireplace, some one knocked at my door, and a negro servant looked in.
Would I like to see the guide?

"Certainly. What is his name?"

"Nicholas, sah, Nicholas! But we all calls him Ole Nick."

Rather an ominous name, to be sure! but then, if one goes to the regions
below, what guide so appropriate?

On presentation, his Majesty proved to be an interesting black man,
considerably past middle age; wrinkled, as none but a genuine negro ever
becomes; a short, broad, strong man, with a grizzled beard and mustache,
quiet but steady eyes, grave in his demeanor, and concise in his
conversation. He tells me of two routes by which I can make a tour
through his dominions. The shortest one will require six hours to
travel, and at the farthest will take me to the banks of the river Styx,
six miles from the entrance to the cave. The other route will take the
whole day, and will lead as far as the so-called "Maelstroem,"--a
singular pit, a hundred and seventy-five feet deep,--and place nine
miles of gloom between me and this outer world. And with these facts to
be juggled and distorted in ridiculous combinations with remembrances of
many persons and places in the vagaries of dreams, I went to bed and to
sleep.

As the sun came up, we went down,--my guide and I,--down a rocky path
along the side of a ravine that grew narrower and deeper until we came
to a dilapidated house where the ravine seemed to end. Stepping upon the
rotting piazza of this old house and facing "right about," there opened
before us, as broad and lofty as the entrance to some ancient Egyptian
temple, the mouth of the cave. From where we stood, a path, as wide as
an ordinary city sidewalk and as smooth, sloped gently downward through
the portal.

Turning to the right to avoid the drip of a limpid stream,--that falls
over the entrance like a perpetual libation to Pluto,--a few minutes'
walk places us many hundred feet vertically beneath the surface, and in
the "Rotunda," an enlargement of the cave, which looks about as large as
the interior of Trinity Church, but is in reality larger; being quite as
lofty, and measuring at its greatest diameter a hundred and seventy-five
feet.

Here, as we paused to look, with our flaring lamps poised above our
heads, a strange squeaking noise was heard, which seemed to come from
everywhere and nowhere in particular. I glanced inquiringly at my guide,
in answer to which he simply replied, "Bats," and pointed to the