And things happened just as he expected they would do; for after another spell, he was brought up short and he found the way blocked and knew that he stood a hundred feet and no more from the mouth of the tunnel in a grass-grown valley bottom among the rocks outside.  But he might as well have been ten miles away, and too well he knew it.  The air was sweet here, for where foxes can run, air can also go; but outlet there was none for him, though somewhere in the mass of stone he doubted not there was a fox-way.  He turned on the torch then and shifted a good few big stones and moved more; but he saw in half an hour the job was beyond his powers and that if he’d been Goliath of Gath he couldn’t have broke down that curtain of granite single-handed.

He’d found a pool of water and got a drink and he’d satisfied his mind that his elbow bled no more, and that was all the cheer he had, for now his torch went out for good and with its last gleam he’d looked at his watch and seen that it was half after two in the morning.  Night or day, however, promised to be all the same for Amos now, and he couldn’t tell whether daylight would penetrate the fall of stone when it came, or if the rock was too heavy to allow of it.  And in any case a gleam of morning wouldn’t help him, for the Goyle was two good miles from Merripit village, and a month might well pass before any man went that way.  Nor would Amos be the wiser if a regiment of soldiers was marching outside.  So it looked as if chance had only put off the evil hour, and he sat down on a stone and chewed a bit of tobacco and felt he was up against his end at last.  Weariness and chill as he grew cold acted upon the man, and afore he knew it he drew up his feet, rested his head on his sound arm, and fell into heavy sleep.  For hours he slumbered and woke so stiff as a log.  But the sleep had served him well and he found his mind active and his limbs rested and his belly crying for food.

He poked about and at last saw something dim that thrust out of the dark on the ground, and then it got brighter, and he marked low down, no higher than his knee, a blue ghost of light shooting through some cleft among the stones.  It waxed until he could put down his watch and read the hands by it.  And he found it was past six o’clock.

He set to work at the rocks again presently, but surrounded by darkness he didn’t know where to begin and knew that a hungry man, with nought but his two hands, could make no great impression on all that stone; but he turned where the ray came through and putting his head to the earth, found there was a narrow channel out to the daylight, and wished he could take shape of a badger and so get through.

Time dragged and hope waned.  But the water proved a source of strength, and Amos knew a man can hold out a long time if water ban’t denied.  His life passed through his mind with all its ups and downs, and he found time to be thankful even in all his trouble that he was a bachelor without wife or child to mourn him.  And then his thoughts ran on to the great mystery there would be and the hunt after him; and he saw very clear indeed that all would go just as it done before, and the police would never find a trace, and Ernest Gregory would weep his eyes out of his head very near and offer a reward so large that everybody would say he was an angel barring the wings.