es like this; therefore, in the morning, before
starting, I congratulated myself that I should be alone, with the
exception of the guide, who fortunately seemed thoroughly imbued with
the spirit of the place in which he had spent the greater portion of his
time for seventeen years.

He was as grave and taciturn as some cave-keeping anchorite. During our
inward progress, he had carefully pointed out every place and object of
interest, and hurled his blue-lights here and there into domes and pits
and cavernous retreats of darkness. But now, on our backward course, he
stalked silently and abstractedly before, though he seemed to listen to
every step of my feet; for, if I paused or made a misstep, he instantly
looked round.

At last he turned, and, looking me curiously in the face, asked whether
I thought I should be afraid if left in the dark there a little while.
Some people could not bear it, he said, and one gentleman who had
consented to the ordeal of darkness had been half crazed by it, and when
the guide, who had withdrawn and concealed himself, with his light,
returned, the traveller tried first to run away into the darkness, and
then, under some strange hallucination, fired his pistol in the guide's
face.

I had a suspicion that the effect of the obscurity was exaggerated; I
was disposed, moreover, to "try the dark," from curiosity. But I must
acknowledge that, when the guide, with that doubting look, repeated his
inquiry, I hesitated, asking, "Is there any danger? and from what?"

"Nobody knows, massa," said he seriously; "only some people's nerve
can't stan' it, dat 's all."

The mention of that odious word, "nerve" sounded so much like the
familiar solicitation, "Try your nerves, gentlemen?" from the
electrical-machine man,--who is found on the curbstone of some
thoroughfare in every city,--that for one brief instant the prestige of
the great cave was gone.

Poh! I thought, so it is only claptrap after all? "Here, take the
lamps, all of them, matches too, and go away so far that I cannot hear
you halloo, even at your loudest. I will sit here until you come back!"
So saying, I sat down upon a rock in the Star Chamber; and he, taking
the lights, walked away toward the entrance of the cave.

"So then," I thought, "this is the perfect darkness, the total absence
of light, which is seldom if ever known above ground; for even in the
darkest night and the darkest house there are some wandering rays of
light; t