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But Ralph paid no attention to her words. He was half-way up the side of the mound when she began to speak, and on its top when she had finished. "Captain," he cried, "hand me up the lantern. I want to see if there is a trap-door into this affair. Don't be afraid, Mrs. Cliff. It's as solid as a rock."
Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly below, and there was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of tobacco, so that she saw nothing and was stifled and disgusted. She sent Glover down, as people lower a dog into a mine where gases are suspected.
At length our plans were completed; my companion had secured the key of a door in the chapel that led through the vaults to a trap-door opening into the garden. A rope ladder flung by Juan over the wall would give us liberty. "At the darkest hour of the night we passed through the door, and crawled through the dreadful passages beneath the monastery.
I would have it understood, however, that I am not writing a novel, and have nothing of intricate plot, or marvellous adventure, to promise the reader. The Hall of which I treat, has, for aught I know, neither trap-door, nor sliding-panel, nor donjon-keep; and indeed appears to have no mystery about it.
The only objects in the cave besides the ladder by which they entered it were a few barrels partially covered with deerskin, an unusually small table, rudely but strongly made, and an enormous mass of rock enclosed in a net of strong rope which hung from an iron hook in the roof. The last object at once revealed the mystery of the trap-door.
He was aroused by hearing the click of the trap-door in the wall as the food was thrust in, and this recalled him to himself. He remembered Harry's last injunction, that he was to continue the work of cutting through the bars of the grating in order to be ready to escape when midnight came.
I sat there wondering what was coming next, and how much longer I had to live, when I smelled smoke, and in a second I knew the depot was on fire. I tried to raise the trap-door, but it had a snap lock and had been dropped so hard in my mad efforts to get away, that it was securely locked. Good God! was I to be burned like a rat in a trap?
Poppit, shameless in her snobbery, would no doubt be at the station with her Order on at both these hours, if the arrival did not take place by the first train, and Isabel would be prancing by or behind her, and, in fact, dreadful though it was to contemplate, all Tilling, she reluctantly believed, would be hanging about.... Then an idea struck her, so glorious, that she put the uprooted love-in-a-mist in the weed-basket, instead of planting it again, and went quickly indoors, up to the attics, and from there popped really popped, so tight was the fit through a trap-door on to the roof.
"There's a trap-door, then? Do you suppose you can point it out to me? Let's stroll down there now. Pretend to be talking about something else, and just cough when we are on the trap." It was not very easy to do. There were about thirty people standing on that little wharf, and they had left baskets, coats and shawls here and there, so that the standing room was pretty well covered.
She broke a window and climbed in she says the floor was hot to her feet then and she and the kids ran up the inside flight to the trap-door. They obeyed her like little soldiers! But the bridge side of the mill was the side the fire was on, and the wood was rotten, you know almost explosive. Half a minute later and they couldn't have made it at all."
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