“You go first, Amos,” said Lord St. Austell; and he leaned back against the wall for Goodhare to pass him.
“You don’t mind going down a floor lower, do you, my lord? I daren’t strike a light till we get below the street level.”
“Do you take refuge in the cellar then?”
“Your lordship will allow that it is better than a police cell. This way. Shall I go first? Mind how you come. It’s only a ladder.”
Lord St. Austell followed without hesitation, but he was not so dull as to ignore the fact that his errand was becoming more dangerous than he had expected. He followed to the first cellar, to which a faint light penetrated through a grating below what had once been the shop window. Goodhare, after listening for a few moments to be sure that no tread of a passer-by was audible on the stone pavement outside, pushed open a door on the right and climbed down into a lower cellar which was as much overheated as the upper one was too cold. The ruddy glow of a fire was seen at once on floor and ceiling, and a gust of air hot as the breath of a furnace, seemed almost to sear the wet, cold faces of the two men as they entered.
“Good heavens! I shall never be able to stay down here,” exclaimed the earl, stepping back from the huge square iron grate, like the cage of an ancient beacon, which stood in the middle of the floor, and in which blazed an enormous fire.
“Oh, you will manage it as long as I want to keep you,” said Amos, quietly.
He drew the door close and made it fast with a rough bolt, while Lord St. Austell examined the cellar in which he found himself, which Amos not inaptly termed a den.
There was no boarding on the floor, nothing but the rough earth. The walls were only bricked in about half-way down, as if the cellar had been dug out after the house was built. A piece of sacking on the floor, two benches, a dirty sofa, and deal table covered with tools and lumber, formed all the furniture. The earl looked attentively at a huge melting-pot which stood before the fire.
“That,” said Goodhare, “was what the gold crowns from the Tower were melted in.”