From this spot the chasm widened rapidly like the lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw distinctly the valley, the road, the lamps which my companion had described.

He had exaggerated nothing.

I heard the sounds he had heard--a mingled indescribable hum as of voices and a dull tramp as of feet.

Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld at a distance the outline of some large building.

It could not be mere natural rock, it was too symmetrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like columns, and the whole lighted as from within.