When Charlie recovered his senses, he found himself lying bound in a room lighted by a dim lamp, which sufficed only to show that the beams were blackened by smoke and age, and the walls constructed of rough stone work.

There was, so far as he could see, no furniture whatever in it, and he imagined that it was an underground cellar, used perhaps, at some time or other, as a storeroom.

It was some time before his brain was clear enough to understand what had happened, or how he had got into his present position.

Gradually the facts came back to him, and he was able to think coherently, in spite of a splitting headache, and a dull, throbbing pain at the back of his head.
"I was knocked down and stunned," he said to himself, at last.

"I wonder what became of Stanislas.