The truth rushed to his mind. The store had been shut and fastened, the gas turned off as usual at night, and everybody had gone home, quite forgetting that he was still in the cellar.
Will was inclined to be superstitious, and a sense of fright came upon him as he found himself alone in this lonely, dark room. He groped his way to the stairs and tried the door. It was firmly bolted. All his efforts could not move it. He called out at the top of his voice, but no answer came back.
“I’m a reg’lar rat in a cage,” he muttered, as he made his way to the windows, thinking to break a pane and call for help. But they faced on a deserted alley, and he feared if even he should bring aid, it would only be to be arrested as a thief.
“I wonder if there is any ghosts in these diggin’s, as some of the men say?” he muttered, looking fearfully around. “I don’t like it a bit. I’ve never been in such a ’tarnal scrape in my life. Blame their eyes, they know’d I was down here, why didn’t they call me up? I believe it was done a-purpose. If I don’t be even with some of them yet, you can sell me.”
But even a cornered coward grows brave, and Will was no coward. The superstitious dread could not long hold the mastery over his bold spirit. It was not long before he threw off the fears which had troubled him.
“I ain’t no baby, to be skeered by a shadder,” he said. “Let what will come I’m goin’ to have a snooze anyhow. I dunno what’s the reason a feller couldn’t sleep as sound here as in my little eight-by-ten hole at home! Bet I make a soft bed, and that there ain’t no ghost or sich bothers itself to waken me up.”
The bed did not lack softness, after he had opened and spread out yard after yard of rich, soft goods on the floor, using some of the heavy cloths he had been counting as a substratum.
But his slumbers were not sound, for reasons which we have not space to give here. What Will saw, and what happened to him that night in the gloomy cellar, must be left for future chapters to declare.