Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/247

 But the cave into which the youths with impatiently beating hearts were descending was not a vault concealing the dead; it was a secret hearth on which was glimmering the feeble flame of the life of a whole nation, the only refuge where the spirit of the nation dared to feel, think, weep and hope.

They soon heard hollow sounds, which, as the harper learned, were earnest words echoing through the large cave in the deepest interior of the rocky cliff on which the old residence of Andrew's ancestors was built. The cave, which was occupied by men, was dimly lighted with a pine torch that was carefully guarded, lest a faint glimmer might stray through some unsuspected crevice in the rock, and being reflected on the waves of the river, might betray their meeting-place. The number of the men was constantly increasing; they were coming in by twos, through as narrow a passage from below as the one through which the young men had come from above. A long underground passage stretched from the cave under the bed of the river to the forest on the