or. Then he
hovered over me, with protests and apologies, until the noble
inspiration took him to inquire if I liked beer. I stood upright in my
pit, and my mouth must have watered as visibly as the rest of my
countenance. It appeared he was not allowed to touch it himself, but he
would fetch some in a jug from the Mulcaster Arms, and blow the wives of
the gentlemen who went to town!

I could no more dissuade him from this share of the proceedings than he
had been able to restrain me from mine; perhaps I did not try very hard;
but I did redouble my exertions when he was gone, burying my spade with
the enthusiasm of a golddigger working a rich claim, and yet depositing
each spadeful with some care under cover of the chairs. And I had hardly
been a minute by myself when I struck indubitable wood at the depth of
three or four feet. Decayed wood it was, too, which the first thrust of
the spade crushed in; and at that I must say the perspiration cooled
upon my skin. But I stood up and was a little comforted by the gay blue
sky and the bottle-green horse-chestnuts, if I looked rather longer at
the French window through which Delavoye had disappeared.

His wild idea had seemed to me the unwholesome fruit of a morbid
imagination, but now I prepared to find it hateful fact. Down I went on
my haunches, and groped with my hands in the mould, to learn the worst
with least delay. The spade I had left sticking in the rotten wood, and
now I ran reluctant fingers down its cold iron into the earth-warm
splinters. They were at the extreme edge of the shaft that I was
sinking, but I discovered more splinters at the same level on the
opposite side. These were not of my making; neither were they part of
any coffin, but rather of some buried floor or staging. My heart danced
as I seized the spade again. I dug another foot quickly; that brought me
to detached pieces of rotten wood of the same thickness as the jagged
edges above; evidently a flooring of some kind had fallen in--but fallen
upon what? Once more the spade struck wood, but sound wood this time.
The last foot of earth was soon taken out, and an oblong trap-door
disclosed, with a rusty ring-bolt at one end.

I tugged at the ring-bolt without stopping to think; but the trap-door
would not budge. Then I got out of the hole for a pickaxe that Delavoye
had produced with the spade, and with one point of the pick through the
ring I was able to get a little leverage. It was more difficul