The room that he quitted was high up in the building, and, descending by a narrow and steep staircase, formed of large square blocks of oak, with nothing but a rope to steady the steps, he entered a long wide corridor below, flanked on one side by tall windows like those of a church, and on the other by numerous small doors. The darkness was so profound that, at first, the rays of the lamp only served to dissipate the obscurity immediately around it, while the rest of the corridor beyond looked like the mouth of a yawning interminable vault, filled with gloom and shadows. The next moment, however, as he advanced, a blazing sheet of electric flame glanced over the windows, displaying their long line upon the right, and the whole interior of the corridor. Here and there an old suit of armour caught the light, and the grotesque figures on two large antique stone benches seemed to grin and gibber in the flame. Still the young man walked on, pausing only for one moment at a door on the left, and looking up at it with a smile somewhat melancholy.
At the end of the corridor, on the left, he came to a larger staircase than that which he had before descended, and going cautiously down, and through some other passages, he found himself in a small vestibule, with two doors on either hand. They were of various dimensions, but all studded with large nails, and secured by thick bands of iron; and turning to the largest of the four, he quietly lifted the latch, and pushed it open. The wind, as he did so, had nearly blown out the lamp, and in suddenly shading it with his hand, he let slip the ponderous mass of woodwork, which was blown back against its lintels with a dull clang, which echoed far away through the vaulted passages of the castle.
The young man paused and listened, apparently fearful that his proceedings might be noticed; but then, as all was silent till a loud peal of thunder again shook the ear of night, he opened the door once more, carefully shading the lamp with his cloak. Then, closing the door gently behind him, he turned a large key that was in the lock, seemingly to ensure that he should not be followed. He was now in a vast old hall, which seemed to have been long unused, for there were manifold green stains upon the stone pavement, no customary rushes strewed the floor, no benches stood at the sides, and the table, at which many a merry meal had passed, was no longer to be seen. A number of torn and dusty banners and pennons, on the lances which had borne them to the field, waved overhead, as the wind, which found its way through many a broken lozenge in the casements, played amongst these shreds of departed glories. A whispering sound came from them likewise, and to an imaginative mind like that of the youth who walked on beneath them, some of the rustling banners seemed to ask, "Whither, whither?" and others to answer, "To dust, to dust."
In the middle of the hall he paused and thought. A degree of hesitation appeared to come over him; and then, murmuring "It must be all nonsense; but, true or not, I have promised, and I will go," he walked forward to another door at the far end of the hall, much smaller than that by which he had entered. Apparently, it had not been opened for a long time, as a pile of dust lay thick, against it. There was no key in the lock, and it seemed fastened from the other side. After pushing it, however, to see if it would give way, the young man drew forth a key, saying to himself, "Perhaps this opens all," and applying it, after some examination of the key-hole, he turned it, and threw back the door. Then holding up the lamp ere he entered, he gazed into the space before him. It was a low narrow passage in the stone-work, with no windows, or even loopholes, perceptible; but yet the damp found its way in, for the walls were glistening all over with unwholesome slime. The pavement, too, if pavement indeed there was at all, was covered thickly with a coating of black mould, from which, every here and there, sprang up a crop of pale sickly fungi covered with noxious dew, spreading a sort of faint, unpleasant, odour around.
So foul, and damp, and gloomy looked the place, that it evidently required an effort of resolution on the young man's part to enter; but after pausing for a moment he did so, and closed and locked the door behind him; then turning round, he looked on, still holding up the lamp, as if he expected to see some fearful object in the way: all was vacant, however, and as the faint rays of light dispersed the darkness, he could perceive another door at the end of the passage, some twenty yards in advance. It, when he reached it, was found unfastened, and on drawing it back--for it opened inwards--the top of a flight of stone steps was before him, descending, apparently, into a well.
It was no faint heart that beat within his bosom, but those were days in which existed a belief almost universal in things which our more material times reject as visionary; or which, at least, are only credited by a few, who can see no reason why, in the scheme of creation, there should not be means of communication between the spiritual and the corporeal, or why the bond of mortal life once dissolved, the immortal tenant of the fleshly body should not still feel some interest in the things of earth, amongst which it moved so long, and have the power and the permission to make its presence felt for warning and for guidance. It is very different to feel an awe and a dread in any undertaking, and to shrink from executing it. The young man did feel awe, for he was going in solitude and the midst of night into places where mortal foot rarely trod, where every association and every object was connected with dark and dreary memories, and with still more gloomy anticipations--the memorials of the dead, the mouldering ruins of fellow-men, the records of the tomb, the picture of all that warm existence comes to in the end. He stopped for a moment there, and gazed down into the dark void below, but the next instant, with a slow and careful foot upon the wet and slippery steps, he began the descent. The air, which was sultry above, felt cold and chilling as he descended, and the lamp burned dim, with a diminished flame, from the impure vapours that seemed congregated in the place. Each step, too, produced a hollow echo, ringing round, and decreasing gradually in sound, both above and below, till it seemed as if voices were whispering behind him and before him. Twice he paused to listen, scarcely able to persuade himself that he did not hear tongues speaking, but as he stopped the sound ceased, and again he proceeded on his way. The square cut stones forming the shaft in which the staircase turned, with the jointing only more clearly discernible from the mortar having dropped out, soon gave way to the more solid masonry of nature, and the rude rock, roughly hewn, was all that was left around him, with the stairs still descending in the midst. A hundred and seventeen steps, some of them perilous from decay, brought him, at length, to the termination, with a door ajar at the foot. All was darkness beyond, and though there seemed a freer air as he pulled the door back, and the lamp burned up somewhat more clearly, yet the vast gloomy expanse before him lost scarcely a particle of its gloom, as he advanced with a beating heart, bearing the light in his hand. He was unconscious of touching the door as he passed, but the moment he had entered it swung slowly to, and a solemn clang echoed through the vault.
Laying his left hand on his dagger, he turned suddenly, and looked behind him, but there was no one there, and he saw nothing but the heavy stone walls and low groined arches, which seemed spreading out interminably on either side. The next moment a bat fluttered across, and swept his face with its cold dewy wing, nearly extinguishing the lamp as it passed; and then, as he took a few steps forward, a low voice asked, "Who is he?"
"Who? who?" several other voices seemed to say; and then another cried, "Hush!"
The young man caught the lamp in his left hand, and half drew his sword with his right, demanding aloud, "Who spoke?" There was no reply but the echo of his own voice amidst the arches; and holding the lamp before him, he turned to the side from which the first question seemed to proceed, and thought he saw a figure standing in the dim obscurity, at a few paces distance. "Who are you?" he cried, stepping forward, but there the figure stood, grew more defined as the rays fell upon it, and the eyeless grinning head, and long mouldy bones of a skeleton appeared, bound with a rusty chain to a thick column. Instinctively he started back, when he first discovered what the object was, and as he did so, a low, wild, echoing laugh rang round through the arches on every side, as if mocking the horror which his countenance expressed. Nothing showed itself, however, and, ashamed of his own sensations, he drew his sword out of the sheath, and walked quickly on. His path soon became encumbered, and first he stumbled over a slimy skull, then trod upon some bones that cranched under his feet, while strange whisperings seemed to spread around him, till, with no light joy, he saw the farther wall of the vault, with an open arch leading out into some place beyond. When he had passed it, however, the scene was no less sad and gloomy, for he seemed now in a vast building like a chapel, where, ranged on either hand, were sepulchral monuments covered with dust, and between them long piles of mouldering