"Jake, you can have anything I've got so as you get a light now."
"There ain't nothing to light here. You broke the lamp."
Quiet for a moment, then Quimby muttered hoarsely:
"If you ain't scared out of your seven senses, you can go down cellar and bring up that bit of candle 'longside the ale-barrels."
Into the cellar! Not Jake. The moving of the rickety table which his fat hand had found and rested on spoke for him.
Another curse from Quimby. Then the woman, though with some hesitation, said with more self-control than could be expected:
"I'll get it," and they heard her move away from it toward the trap-door behind the bar.
The two men made no objection. To her that cold, black cellar might seem a refuge from the unseen horror centred here. It had not struck them so. It had its own possibilities, and Jake wondered at her courage, as he caught the sound of her groping advance and the sudden clatter and clink of bottles as the door came up and struck the edge of the bar. There was life and a suggestion of home in that clatter and clink, and all breathed easier for a moment, but only for a moment. The something lying there behind them, or was it almost under their feet, soon got its hold again upon their fears, and Jake found himself standing stock-still, listening both ways for that dreaded, or would it be welcome, movement on the floor behind, and to the dragging sound of Mrs. Quimby's skirt and petticoat as she made her first step down those cellar-stairs. What an endless time it took! He could rush down there in a minute, but she—she could not have reached the third step yet, for that always creaked. Now it did creak. Then there was no sound for some time, unless it was the panting of Quimby's breath somewhere over by the bar. Then the stair creaked again. She must be nearly up.
"Here's matches and the candle," came in a hollow voice from the trap-stairs.
A faint streak appeared for an instant against the dark, then disappeared. Another; but no lasting light. The matches were too damp to burn.