The Door to Eternity
effort, and with a tolerably firm step moved across the floor and joined the woman.
He noted that she was attired as though for traveling. The circumstance puzzled him, yet at the moment he could spare no strength for words.
"Ready, madame," he announced with difficulty.
The woman stepped through the opened panel into stark blackness, which lay beyond. He followed; and she turned and slid the panel back into position. A furious crash told him that the doors to the hall—one or both of them—had given away.
Summoning the utmost of his iron resolution, the Irishman permitted the woman to take the lead, stumbling after her, guiding himself through the impenetrable darkness by the sounds of her passage—the rustle of her skirts and the light, almost inaudible tap of her footsteps.
"Faith, 'tis a woman after me own heart, she is!" he, thought. "To lead on so, without weakness or faltering, in a time like this—without stopping to comfort me, or to mourn!"
He felt himself stronger with each instant. The liquor was acting upon him oddly, seeming to flood his being with great, recurring waves of power. This effect, he knew, was but transient; yet it would serve.
It seemed that they trod miles of dense darkness; they descended steps, climbed again, felt their way down narrow and tortuous passages, cold as the heart of death itself. It was a progress interminable to the wounded man: hours seemed to elapse.
"Surely," he thought, "'tis morning; be now."
Yet when they unexpectedly emerged, it was into the open air of the mountainside, and the winter's night still held over
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