The Door of Bewilderment

"I've found something," he said, filling his pipe.

"Not soap, evidently!"

"No, but I'm going to say the last word on the tunnel,
and within an hour. Give me a glass of beer and a
piece of bread, and we'll go back and see whether we're
sold again or not."

"Let us explore the idea and be done with it. Wait
till I tell Stoddard where we're going."

The chaplain was trying the second-floor walls, and
I asked him to eat some luncheon and stand guard while
Larry and I went to the tunnel.

We took with us an iron bar, an ax and a couple of
hammers. Larry went ahead with a lantern.

"You see," he explained, as we dropped through the
trap into the passage, "I've tried a compass on this
tunnel and find that we've been working on the wrong
theory. The passage itself runs a straight line from
the house under the gate to the crypt; the ravine is a
rough crescent-shape and for a short distance the tunnel
touches it. How deep does that ravine average-about
thirty feet?"

"Yes; it's shallowest where the house stands. it
drops sharply from there on to the lake."

"Very good; but the ravine is all on the Glenarm side
of the wall, isn't it? Now when we get under the wall
I'll show you something."

"Here we are," said Larry, as the cold air blew in
through the hollow posts. "Now we're pretty near that
sharp curve of the ravine that dips away from the wall.
Take the lantern while I get out the compass. What
do you think that C on the piece of paper means? Why,
chapel, of course. I have measured the distance from
the house, the point of departure, we may assume, to
the chapel, and three-fourths of it brings us under those
beautiful posts. The directions are as plain as daylight.
The passage itself is your N. W., as the compass
proves, and the ravine cuts close in here; therefore, our
business is to explore the wall on the ravine side."