" And then
there were the others who had found death in the heart of that
mysterious cavern,--ugly death.
He wondered what the interior of the cave was like, and whether he
could devise some means of entering it. A rope ladder attached to
a substantial support at the top of the cliff would afford the easiest
way of reaching the mouth of the cave,--in fact, he recalled that
Quill employed some such means of descending to his eerie home. The
entrance appeared to be no more than twenty feet below the brow of
the cliff. It would not even be a hazardous undertaking. Besides,
if Quill and his successors were able to go up and down that wall
safely and repeatedly, why not he? No doubt scores of men,--perhaps
even schoolboys of the Tom Sawyer type,--had made frequent visits
to the cave. He knew he would be disregarding the command of Alix
Crown,--a command that all people respected and observed,--if he
passed the barrier and climbed to the top of the rock, but who,
after all, was Alix Crown that she should say "no trespass" to the
world at large?
The thought of Edward Crown wedged in at the bottom of Quill's Chimney,
weighted down with stones and earth, alone served as an obstacle to
the enterprise. He shrank from certain gruesome possibilities,--such
as the dislodgment of stones at the bottom of the crevice and the
consequent exposure of a thing that would haunt him forever.
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