"
"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.
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