After that even the wind hushed and the moonlight went out.
I advanced cautiously over the embers, and felt my way down the room and into the passage without.

There, where the conspirators had left it, stood the candle, and the tinder-box beside it.

I carried the light back to the hearth, shading it with my hand for fear any one without might see it, and set it down beside the flagstone.

All over this stone I groped without finding any trace of a rift or any hint of how to lift so formidable a weight.

It seemed fast set in the boards, and gave no sound of hollowness or symptom of unsteadiness when I tried it.
I was almost beginning to lose heart, when I knelt by chance, not on the stone, but on a short board at the side, which ran at right angles with the general planks, and seemed intended as part of a kind of framework to the stone.