The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

some half-dozen candles. The lantern is to show us
our way, and the candles are for the purpose of
being lighted and stuck up at the turnings in the
dark underground passages which we are about to
traverse. Should mischance befall our lantern, these
tapers, like beacon-lights in a narrow creek, will
pilot us safely back into the day. The cicerone,
selecting the largest from the bunch of keys, inserts
it in the lock of the massy portal before which we
stand, bolt after bolt is turned, and the door, with
hoarse heavy groan as it turns on its hinge, opens
slowly to us. We begin to descend. We go down
one flight of steps; we go down a second flight; we
descend yet a third. And now we pause a moment.
The darkness is intense, for here never came the
faintest glimmer of day; but a gleam thrown
forward from the lantern showed us that we were
arrived at the entrance of a horizontal, narrow
passage. We could see, by the flickering of the
light upon its sides and roof, that the corridor we
were traversing was hewn out of the rock. We had
gone only a few paces when we were brought up
before a massy door. As far as the dim light served
us, we could see the door, old, powdery with dust,
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