However, this was not the moment to get discouraged.
Harry, his arms extended, advanced with a firm step, touching first one and then the other side of the passage.
If a cleft or side opening presented itself, he felt with his hand that it was not the main way; either the cleft was too shallow, or the opening too narrow, and he thus kept in the right road.
In darkness through which the eye could not in the slightest degree pierce, this difficult return lasted two hours.

By reckoning the time since they started, taking into consideration that the walking had not been rapid, Starr calculated that he and his companions were near the opening.

In fact, almost immediately, Harry stopped.
"Have we got to the end of the gallery ?" asked Simon Ford.
"Yes," answered the young miner.
"Well! have you not found the hole which connects New Aberfoyle with the Dochart pit ?" "No," replied Harry, whose impatient hands met with nothing but a solid wall.
The old overman stepped forward, and himself felt the schistous rock.

A cry escaped him.
Either the explorers had strayed from the right path on their return, or the narrow orifice, broken in the rock by the dynamite, had been recently stopped up.

James Starr and his companions were prisoners in New Aberfoyle..