way upon our hands and knees under a very
depressed arch. No sooner out of this vexation,
still half choked, and with a sense of having
broken from the Inquisition's compressible iron
room, I find myself in a strange winding
passage, formed by two walls of rock, about four
feet high, and exceedingly narrow.

"Where are we, you rascal?" roars St. Ives,
who never cares to be civil to any one poorer than
himself. Seneca, hushing his untiring crow about

"Den hoe it down and scratch the grabble,
To Dixie's land I'm bound to trabble,
Away down south in Dixie,"

answers, " This is the Fat Man's Misery, yah!
yah!"

The Tall Man's Misery, equally well
denominated, we had passed in the Humble Chute.
It is quite a relief to drag one's fettered limbs
out of this little trough, which, as St. Ives
authoritatively says, " was undoubtedly scooped
out by water power." Oh that I had the power
to immure a certain fat enemy of mine in these
stone stocks! And here I perhaps ought to
state, that at certain intervals of our slow tour,
it is ever Seneca's habit to tarry behindhand,
to the fretful vexation of St. Ives, and set fire to
a blue light which he leaves stuck upright in the
soft sand and detritus that lay in heaps in some
parts of the cave.

"I live in Ginger Bluff," it is now his humour
to sing, as the light grows from a vivid white
to a pale blue that diffuses itself as far as we
can see. Then I begin to expect again that the
tall man with the ghastly laugh and the red
cloak, will stalk out from some recess, heralded
by a white owl and a swarm of bats, followed by
the coffin boat containing our old friends Death
in Life, and Queen Sin, with sheets of red fire
and a dance of leathery goblins slapping
themselves with their stingy green tails.

Before I quit the cave, I must not forget to
mention its Church, where a romantic couple
were, I believe, once married ("forgetting,"
says that pedantic punster, St. Ives, "the Latin
warning, Cave!"): a curious chamber supported
by stalagmite pillars that looks like the worn
barkless trunks of old trees. Nor must I forget
the votive altars of loose stones erected by the
natives of the different states of the Union. I
add a small slab to "England." Tennessee
has an obelisk reaching nearly to the roof. I
should also mention that, near the entrance,
Seneca directs our attention to a row of square
troughs or pits, sunk in the floor of the cave,
and surrounded by half rotten woodwork.

Those pits are, to me, the most interesting
spots in the whole cave. They are the places
where during the War of Independence the
Americans dug for saltpetre. Our cruisers,
tyrannously strong on the sea then, so swept the New
World coast, that vessels bringing gunpowder
for those whom we called "rebels," could not land
their cargoes. Washington was therefore driven
to dig for the nitrous earth in this cave, just as
the London Puritans during the civil wars, or the
Parisians in the Great French Revolution, dug in
their cellars for the same element of destruction.

I must give up all hope of describing what
I saw besides. Napoleon's Breastwork, the
Elephant's Head, the Lovers' Leap, the Steps
of Time, the Bottomless Pit, the Labyrinth, the
Dead Sea, the Bandits' Hall, the Rocky
Mountains, the Big Chimneys, the Waterfall, the
Cross Room, the Linden Banks, Annetti's Dome,
the Dining-room, the Cooling-tub. Yes, even
from those wonderful rooms, hung with
snow-flowers of stalactite, I must now hurry myself.

Again we thread back the maze; up, down,
looking through loops of rocks, down shafts,
and up at ceilings; groping, crawling, stumbling;
we retrace our steps, tired with eighteen miles
or more of walking. St. Ives lags behind until
his lantern becomes a Will-o'-the-wisp in
distant passage; and as we emerge into the
steaming evening mist at the mouth of the cave,
Seneca, never tired, never sad, shouts out a scrap
of the song of the New York volunteer firemen

"Wake up, Mose! de fire am burnin',
Bound de corner smoke am curlin',
Take de rope and keep her runnin'.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Wake up, Mose!"

THE GREY WOMAN.

IN THREE PORTIONS.   PORTION THE THIRD.

FAR on in the night there were voices outside
reached us in our hiding-place; an angry knocking
at the door, and we saw through the chinks
the old woman rouse herself up to go and open
it for her master, who came in, evidently half
drunk. To my sick horror, he was followed by
Lefebvre, apparently as sober and wily as ever.
They were talking together as they came in,
disputing about something; but the miller stopped
the conversation to swear at the old woman for
having fallen asleep, and, with tipsy anger, and
even with blows, drove the poor old creature out
of the kitchen to bed. Then he and Lefebvre
went on talking— about the Sieur de Poissy's
disappearance. It seemed that Lefebvre had
been out all day, along with other of my
husband's men, ostensibly assisting in the search;
in all probability trying to blind the Sieur de
Poissy's followers by putting them on a wrong
scent, and also, I fancied, from one or two of
Lefebvre's sly questions, combining the hidden
purpose of discovering us.

Although the miller was tenant and vassal to
the Sieur de Poissy, he seemed to me to be
much more in league with the people of M. de
la Tourelle. He was evidently aware, in part, of
the life which Lefebvre and the others led;
although, again, I do not suppose he knew or
imagined one-half of their crimes; and also, I
think, he was seriously interested in discovering
the fate of his master, little suspecting Lefebvre
of murder or violence. He kept talking himself,
and letting out all sorts of thoughts and
opinions; watched by the keen eyes of Lefebvre
gleaming out below his shaggy eyebrows. It
was evidently not the cue of the latter to let out
that his master's wife had escaped from that vile
and terrible den; but though he never breathed
a word relating to us, not the less was I certain