CHAPTER XX.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 127, 7 November 1885, Page 3

CHAPTER XX.

SHUT IN. When Lillis, in her wild, aimless rush from the sacristy, turned into the friendly nook under the pulpit, her flight was ended in the most startling and extraordinary manner. Her hands, again instinctively outstretched before her face, struck two or three of the carved knobs that thickly ornamented the paneling, whilst her body was precipitated in the same direction with almost stunning fcce. At the blow her head seemed to reel ; the paneling seemed to give way, a strange, rushing sound filled her ears. She caught, like a passing flash, the faint gleam of Robert Hood's lantern the other side of the pulpit stairs, and then all was dead silence and impenetrable darkness. The paneling with its masonry had given way, and, relieved of her weight, and the touch that had started the secret machinery, closed again swiftly, noiselessly and surely. For a little she lay where she had fallen on the cold Btones, too much confused to understand what had happened. The soft, rushing sound still filled her ears, and with it seemed to mingle the musical voice of the unknown. " Flee ! Flee !" seemed to be repeated over and over. But to her dim consciousness it was as void of meaning as the senseless rushing murmur in her ears. After a time her strong, youthful vitality, together with the chilliness of the air and floor, came to her relief. Thoughts began to shape themselves clearly. Events began to take their place in consecutive order. All at once she struggled to a sitting posture and turned her head from side to side in the vain effort to penetrate the Cimmerian gloom. She put out both hands. She moved them slowly around. Nothing mec her touch. She turned. Behind her, rising from the landing on which she haJ fallen, were two broad, low stone steps. Above them rose a smooth stone wall. She dropped her hand to the steps again and gasped. An awful sense of suffocation oppreesing her — an awful sense of being entombed alive— she slid across the stone landing, and found herself at the head of a flight of stairs. She descended cautiously. At the twentieth she reached the flooring. There she stood wildly upon her feet. "Oh, Heaven ! where am I? Where am I ?" she cried, stiflingly. In the extremity of her terror she dropped upoa her knees. She had barely uttered a cry to the Great j Helper when she all at once paused and held her breath. That soft, rushing sound — what was it ? — Could it be running water ? She listened. She sprang to her feet again. It truly was that, and nothing else. With a sudden revulsion from black despair to eager hope Bhe began to move slowly and cautiously in the direction. She had not gone far when she met an obstacle in the shape of a solid stone wall. As her fingers touched it, that former wild sense of instant suffocation mastered her again. She clutched at her throat. " Oh," she gasped, " if I only had a light, if 1 only had a light it would not seem bo terrible. But," speaking with a sudden Btern resolve, "I will not give way. That murmur of water certainly means some near passage to the outer world. Still' a light-" The sentence ended in a quick, glad ejaculation. Gathering her skirts closer as she turned to follow the wall, her hand struck against something hard in hex dress pocket. It was a safety box, containing candlestick and wax tapera and vestas, put there as a precautionary measure before leaving her apartments.

" To think," she pried •« that in my terror I should have forgotten it. How little one ean depend upon' one's coolnesB in times of great emergency." ■ < . With a trembling, breathless haste that almost defeated her own purpose, she drew out the box and made a light. It was but a feeble glow. Still it was in* finitely oheering. The girl took fresh courage and began to look around with a sense of interest and curiosity that held her anxiety in oheok. At the first glance she saw that her fears of suffocation were quite groundless. The chamber, though by no means large, was of fair size. It was of stone and wholly unfurnished. , But she gave little heed to these facts. Still impressed with the idea that the fall of vater promised a mode of exit; to the grounds, she hastened to the spot;, but only to find that, instead of penetrating from without, as she had imagined, the spring held its source in the midst of the chamber. The' Stream issued' from a rude pile of rocks. • Just as nature had fantastically disposed it in its native wilds, so it had been inclosed within the wells, and so.it still stood. The water leaped from its rocky outlet with a gay rush and flash, casting its spray over a delicate growth of colourless mosses and pale lichens, till finally lost in its subterranean channel. Lillis gazed a moment, and then looked back tovva.rd the steps. "Ik must have been a glen once," she thought. ' * It is a direct descent from the chapel. But how is that to help me ?" j She returned hurriedly to the spot where she had fallen; But a careful examination of the wall showed no means of starting the seoret machinery, while' its massiveness at once precluded all hope of making herself heard within the chapel. As that fact became clear to her mind she grew weak under a sudden faintness. She might die before she was discoveredShe might never be discovered ; for who knew of the existence of this underground chamber ? No one, she believed. The dread answer broke from her wildly, and hastily descending the steps, she sat down and put the candle on the floor till she could recover her failing strength. For a little she sat with strained, unseeing gaze fastened unchangingly upon the flagging. But all at once a sudden light and life flamed up in her fixed eye. She drew a quick, sharp breath. She leaned forward. She looked closer and still closer at the floor Did or did not her eye deceive her ? It did not. Strange, incredible, startling as the fact seemed, her eye had told her the exact truth.