And things happened just as he expected they would do; for after another
spell, he was brought up short and he found the way blocked and knew that
he stood a hundred feet and no more from the mouth of the tunnel in a
grass-grown valley bottom among the rocks outside. But he might as well
have been ten miles away, and too well he knew it. The air was sweet here,
for where foxes can run, air can also go; but outlet there was none for
him, though somewhere in the mass of stone he doubted not there was a
fox-way. He turned on the torch then and shifted a good few big stones and
moved more; but he saw in half an hour the job was beyond his powers and
that if he'd been Goliath of Gath he couldn't have broke down that curtain
of granite single-handed.
He'd found a pool of water and got a drink and he'd satisfied his mind
that his elbow bled no more, and that was all the cheer he had, for now
his torch went out for good and with its last gleam he'd looked at his
watch and seen that it was half after two in the morning. Night or day,
however, promised to be all the same for Amos now, and he couldn't tell
whether daylight would penetrate the fall of stone when it came, or if the
rock was too heavy to allow of it. And in any case a gleam of morning
wouldn't help him, for the Goyle was two good miles from Merripit village,
and a month might well pass before any man went that way.
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