Alice’s head still ached but she decided to ignore it and she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the Black Rat was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, ‘Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!’ She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rat was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of dim, flickering lamps that seemed to cast off a cold light hanging from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low black curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a Rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the grandest graveyard you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among the tall upright headstones and weathered and ancient tombs, to lay amongst the weedy distance and the wood beyond. She was sure adventure could be had in a wood so dark and foreboding, but she could not even get her bloody, throbbing head though the doorway; ‘and even if my head would go through,’ thought poor Alice, ‘it would be of very little use without my shoulders.