He had time to think many such things as he slowly crept along the low passage in the black darkness.  It seemed long before his hand came in contact with the door he had been told he should presently reach, and this door, as Constanza had said, yielded to his touch, and he felt rather than saw that he had emerged into a wider space beyond.

This place, whatever it was, was not wholly dark, though so very dim that it was impossible to make out anything save the dull red glow of what might be some embers on a distant hearth.  Gaston did not speak a word, but waited till all his companions had reached this more open space, and had risen to their feet and grasped their weapons.  Then all held their breath, and listened for any sound that might by chance reveal the presence of hidden foes, till they started at the sound of Roger’s voice speaking softly but with complete assurance.

“There is no one here,” he said.  “We are quite alone.  Let me kindle a torch and show you.”

Roger, as Gaston had before observed, possessed a cat-like faculty of seeing in the dark.  Whether it was natural to him, or had been acquired during those days spent almost entirely underground in the sorcerer’s vaulted chamber at Basildene, the youth himself scarcely knew.  But he was able to distinguish objects clearly in gloom which no ordinary eye could penetrate; and now he walked fearlessly forward and stirred up the smouldering embers, whose dull red glow all could see, into a quick, bright, palpitating flame which illumined every corner of the strange place into which they had penetrated.

Gaston and his men looked wonderingly around them, as they lighted their lanterns at the fire and flashed them here and there into all the dark corners, as though to assure themselves that there were no ambushed foes lurking in the grim recesses of that circular room.  But Roger had been quite right.  There was nothing living in that silent place.  Not so much as a loophole in the wall admitted any air or light from the outer world, or could do so even in broad noon.  The chamber was plainly hollowed out in the mass of earth and masonry of which the foundations of the Tower were composed, and if any air were admitted (as there must have been, else men could not breathe down there), it was by some device not easily discovered at a first glance.

It was in truth a strange and terrible place —­ the dank walls, down which the damp moisture slowly trickled, hung round with instruments of various forms, all designed with a terrible purpose, and from their look but too often used.

Gaston’s face assumed a look of dark wrath and indignation as his quick eyes roved round this evil place, and he set his teeth hard together as he muttered to himself: 

“Heaven send that the Prince himself may one day look upon the vile secrets of this charnel house!  I would that he and his royal father might know what deeds of darkness are even now committed in lands that own their sway!  Would that I had that wicked wretch here in my power at this moment!  Well does he deserve to be torn in pieces by his own hideous engines.  And in this very place does he design to do to death my brother!  May God pardon me if I sin in the thought, but death by the sword is too good for such a miscreant!”