ing the stems, using a couple of logs for mallets. The fire
blazed up, the water boiled. About two o'clock in the morning, Kolb
heard a sound which David was too busy to notice, a kind of deep
breath like a suppressed hiccough. Snatching up one of the two lighted
dips, he looked round the walls, and beheld old Sechard's empurpled
countenance filling up a square opening above a door hitherto hidden
by a pile of empty casks in the cellar itself. The cunning old man had
brought David and Kolb into his underground distillery by the outer
door, through which the casks were rolled when full. The inner door
had been made so that he could roll his puncheons straight from the
cellar into the distillery, instead of taking them round through the
yard.

"Aha! thees eies not fair blay, you vant to shvindle your son!" cried
the Alsacien. "Do you kow vot you do ven you trink ein pottle of vine?
You gif goot trink to ein bad scountrel."

"Oh, father!" cried David.

"I came to see if you wanted anything," said old Sechard, half sobered
by this time.

"Und it was for de inderest vot you take in us dot you brought der
liddle ladder!" commented Kolb, as he pushed the casks aside and flung
open the door; and there, in fact, on a short step-ladder, the old man
stood in his shirt.

"Risking your health!" said David.

"I think I must be walking in my sleep," said old Sechard, coming down
in confusion. "Your want of confidence in your father set me dreaming;
I dreamed you were making a pact with the Devil to do impossible
things."

"Der teufel," said Kolb; "dot is your own bassion for de liddle
goldfinches."

"Go back to bed again, father," said David; "lock us in if you will,
but you may save yourself the trouble of coming down again. Kolb will
mount guard."

At four o'clock in the morning David came out of the distillery; he
had been careful to leave no sign of his occupation behind him; but he
brought out some thirty sheets of paper that left nothing to be
desired in fineness, whiteness, toughness, and strength, all of them
bearing by way of water-mark the impress of the uneven hairs of the
sieve. The old man took up the samples and put his tongue to them, the
lifelong habit of the pressman, who tests papers in this way. He felt
it between his thumb and finger, crumpled and creased it, put it
through all the trials by which a printer assays the quality of a
sample submitted to him, and when it was found wanting in no respect,
h