The fissure had probably been there from the beginning of time, or it might be the result of numberless years of the slow wearing away of a softer vein of rock, but some man at some time had lighted on it, and followed it up, and with much labour had smoothed its natural asperities and used it for his own purposes.  And he was keen to learn what those purposes were.

To any ordinary man, accustomed to the ordinary amplitudes of life, and freedom to stretch his arms and legs and raise his head and fill his lungs with fresh air, a passage such as this would have been impossible.  Here and there, indeed, the walls widened somewhat through some fault in the rook, bur for the most part his elbows grazed the sides each time he moved them.

Even he, used as he was to such conditions, began at last to feel them oppressive.  The whole mighty bulk of L’Etat seemed above and about him, malignantly intent on crushing him out of existence.

He knew that was only fancy.  He had experienced it many times before.  But the nightmare feeling was there, and it needed all his will at times to keep him from a panic attempt at retreat, when the insensate rock-walls seemed absolutely settling down on him, and breathing was none too easy.

But going back meant literally going backwards, crawling out toes foremost; for his elbows scraped the walls and his head the roof, and turning was out of the question.  The men who had made and used that narrow way had undoubtedly gone with a purpose, and not for pleasure.  And he was bound to learn what that purpose was.

So he set his teeth, and wormed himself slowly along, with pinched face and tight-shut mouth, and nostrils opened wide to take in all the air they could and let out as little as possible.  And, even at that, he had to lie still at times, pressed flat against the floor, to let some fresher air trickle in above him.

But at last he came to what he sought, though no whit of it could he see when he got there.  By the sudden cessation of the pressure on his sides and head, he was aware of entrance into a larger space, and, with forethought quickened by the exigences of his passage, he lay for a moment to pant more freely and to think.

His body was in the passage.  He knew where the passage led out to.  What lay ahead he could not tell.

If it was a chamber, as he expected, there might quite possibly be other passages leading out of it.  And so it would be well to make sure of recognizing this one again before he loosed his hold on it.  So he pulled off one boot, and feeling carefully round the opening, placed it just inside as a landmark.

Then he groped on along the right-hand wall to learn the size of the chamber, and was immediately thankful that his own passage was safely marked, for he came on another opening, and another, and another, and labelled them carefully in his mind, “One, two, three.”

It was truly eerie work, groping there in that dense darkness and utter silence, and trying to the nerves even of one who had never known himself guilty of such things.  But, being there, he was determined to learn all he could.