should have seen how
next to proceed, but I was still in total darkness. I could not tell
what I might find outside the chest. Moving carefully I climbed out,
moving about with my feet to find the ground, which was lower I thus
ascertained than the bottom of the chest, but how much lower I could not
tell. I therefore held tight on with my hands while I let myself down,
and I then discovered that it had been placed on another chest of about
the same size; but I had to move very cautiously, as there might be
still some lower depth beneath my feet, though I didn't think that very
likely. The ground was dry and hard, without either bricks or
flagstones. This I found out by stopping down and touching it with my
hand. I now began to move on very carefully, feeling my way from chest
to chest. I discovered in my progress not only chests, but casks and
bales. I had little doubt, therefore, that I had been conveyed to the
smugglers' store, but where it was situated I was totally unable to
surmise. That it was some way inland I thought probable, as I could not
hear the sound of the surf breaking on the sea shore, which I thought I
should have done had I been near the coast. I tried to think if I
recollected any building which it was at all probable would be thus used
by the smugglers. There were, I at last remembered, two mills not far
from the coast, but one was in the possession of too respectable a
farmer to allow any lawless proceedings to be carried on in his
premises. The other was an old windmill that had been abandoned the
last two or three years; two of the arms had fallen down, and the whole
building was in a very ruinous and tottering condition. The property I
had heard was in Chancery, the exact meaning of which I didn't
understand, but knew no one was ever seen about the place, and that the
villagers from the neighbouring hamlet were unwilling to approach it
after dark, there being a report that it was haunted by a headless
miller, who had been killed while in a fit of drunkenness by his own
machinery. Could this be the place, I thought. The idea didn't make me
feel more comfortable, not that I had any strong belief in ghosts or
other spirits walking the earth in bodily shape; but yet I didn't feel
perfectly certain that such beings did not exist, and I confess to
having had an indefinite dread of seeing the headless miller appear out
of the darkness surrounded by a blue light. I tried to banish the idea