In this matter, the idiot could give them little help.  He could, and did, describe, in some particulars, such of the interior as he had been enabled to see on former occasions, but beyond this he could do nothing; and he was resolute not to hazard himself entering the dominion of a personage, so fearful as Guy Rivers, in such companionship as would surely compel the wolf to turn at bay.  Alone, his confidence in his own stealth and secresy, would encourage him to penetrate; but, now!—­he only grinned at the suggestion of the hunters saying shrewdly:  “No! thank you!  I’ll stay out here and keep Chub’s company.”

Accordingly, he remained without, closely gathered up into a lump, behind a tree, while the more determined Georgians penetrated with cautious pace into the dark avenue, known in the earlier days of the settlement as a retreat for the wolves when they infested that portion of the country, and hence distinguished by the appellation of the Wolf’s Neck.

For some time they groped onward in great uncertainty as to their course; but a crevice in the wall, at one point, gave them a glimmer of the moonlight, which, falling obliquely upon the sides of the cavern, enabled them to discern the mouth of another gorge diverging from that in which they were.  They entered, and followed this new route, until their farther progress was arrested by a solid wall which seemed to close them in, hollowly caved from all quarters, except the one narrow point from which they had entered it.

Here, then, they were at a stand; but, according to Chub’s directions, there must be a mode of ingress to still another chamber from this; and they prepared to seek it in the only possible way; namely, by feeling along the wall for the opening which their eye had failed to detect.  They had to do this on hands and knees, so low was the rock along the edges of the cavern.

The search was finally successful.  One of the party found the wall to give beneath his hands.  There was an aperture, a mere passage-way for wolf or bear, lying low in the wall, and only closed by a heavy curtain of woollen.

This was an important discovery.  The opening led directly into the chamber of the outlaw.  How easily it could be defended, the hunters perceived at a glance.  The inmate of the cavern, if wakeful and courageous, standing above the gorge with a single hatchet, could brain every assailant on the first appearance of his head.  How serious, then, the necessity of being able to know that the occupant of the chamber slept—­that occupant being Guy Rivers.  The pursuers well knew what they might expect at his hands, driven to his last fastness, with the spear of the hunter at his throat.  Did he sleep, then—­the man who never slept, according to the notion of his followers, or with one eye always open!