labour thus expended, he dismantled behind and a little above it a narrow passage, into which he crept, partly to satisfy his love of “exploring,” partly in the hope that it might afford him an egress in the direction of the village.  The aperture thus exposed had not, in fact, escaped the eye of St. Aubyn, when about an hour afterwards the search for the lost boy was renewed.  But one of his guides, after a brief inspection, declared the recess into which it opened empty, and the party, satisfied with his report, left the spot, little thinking that all their labor had been lost by a too hasty examination.  For, in fact, this narrow and apparently limited passage gradually widened in its darkest part, and, as little St Aubyn found, became by degrees a tolerably roomy corridor, in which he could just manage to walk upright, and into which light from the outer world penetrated dimly through artificial fissures hollowed out at intervals in the rocky wall.  Delighted at this discovery, but chilled by the vaultlike coldness of the place, the lad hastened back to fetch the fur mantle he had left in the cave, threw it over his shoulders, and returned to continue his exploration.  The cavern gallery beguiled him with ever-new wonders at every step.  Here rose a subterranean spring, there a rudely carved gargoyle grinned from the granite roof; curious and intricate windings enticed his eager steps, while all the time the deathlike and horrible silence which might have deterred an ordinary child from further advance, failed of its effect upon ears unable to distinguish between the living sounds of the outer world and the stillness of a sepulchre.

Thus he groped and wandered, until he became aware that the gloom of the corridor had gradually deepened, and that the tiny opening in the rock were now far less frequent than at the outset.  Even to his eyes, by this time accustomed to obscurity, the darkness grew portentous, and at every step he stumbled against some unseen projection, or bruised his hands in vain efforts to discover a returning path.  Too late he began to apprehend that he was nearly lost in the heart of the mountain.  Either the windings of the labyrinth were hopelessly confusing, or some debris, dislodged by the unaccustomed concussion of footsteps, had fallen from the roof and choked the passage behind him.  The account which the boy gave of his adventure, and of his vain and long-continued efforts to retrace his way, made the latter hypothesis appear to us the more acceptable, the noise occasioned by such a fall having of course passed unheeded by him.  In the end, thoroughly baffled and exhausted, the lad determined to work on through the Cimmerian darkness in the hope of discovering a second terminus on the further side of the mountain.  This at length he did.  A faint starlike outlet finally presented itself to his delighted eyes; he groped painfully towards it; gradually it widened and brightened,