In one instant Sir Norman was on his feet and his hand on his sword. In
the tarry darkness, neither the face nor figure of the intruder could be
made out, but he merely saw a darker shadow beside him standing in the
sea of darkness. Perhaps he might have thought it a ghost, but that the
hand which grasped his shoulder was unmistakably of flesh, and blood,
and muscle, and the breathing of its owner was distinctly audible by his
ads.
"Who are you?" demanded Sir Norman, drawing out his sword, and wrenching
himself free from his unseen companion.
"Ah! it is you, is it? I thought so," said a not unknown voice. "I have
been calling you till I am hoarse, and at last gave it up, and started
after you in despair. What are you doing here?"
"You, Ormiston!" exclaimed Sir Norman, in the last degree astonished.
"How--when--what are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here? that's more to the purpose. Down flat on
your face, with your head stuck through that hole. What is below there,
anyway?"
"Never mind," said Sir Norman, hastily, who, for some reason quite
unaccountable to himself, did not wish Ormiston to see. "There's nothing
therein particular, but a lower range of vaults. Do you intend telling
me what has brought you here?"
"Certainly; the very fleetest horse I could find in the city."
"Pshaw! You don't say so?" exclaimed Sir Norman, incredulously. "But
I presume you had some object in taking such a gallop? May I ask what?
Your anxious solicitude on my account, very likely?"
"Not precisely. But, I say, Kingsley, what light is that shining through
there? I mean to see."
"No, you won't," said Sir Norman, rapidly and noiselessly replacing the
flag. "It's nothing, I tell you, but a number of will-o-'wisps having
a ball. Finally, and for the last time, Mr. Ormiston, will you have the
goodness to tell me what has sent you here?"
"Come out to the air, then. I have no fancy for talking in this place;
it smells like a tomb."
"There is nothing wrong, I hope?" inquired Sir Norman, following his
friend, and threading his way gingerly through the piles of rubbish in
the profound darkness.
"Nothing wrong, but everything extremely right. Confound this place!
It would be easier walking on live eels than through these winding and
lumbered passages. Thank the fates, we are through them, at last! for
there is the daylight, or, rather the nightlight, and we have escaped
without any bones broken."
They had reached the mouldering and crumbling doorway, shown by a square
of lighter darkness, and exchanged the damp, chill atmosphere of the
vaults for the stagnant, sultry open air. Sir Norman, with a notion in
his head that his dwarfish highness might have placed sentinels around
his royal residence, endeavored to pierce the gloom in search of them.
Though he could discover none, he still thought discretion the better
part of valor, and stepped out into the road.