I’d no idea what he meant till we went down-stairs, when he had the strong-room door opened and the cellar too and then he made me help him carry the old plate-chests right through my pantry into the far wine-cellar, and range them one after the other along one side.
I wanted to tell him that they would not be so safe there; but I daren’t speak, and it was not till what followed that I began to understand; for, as soon as we had gone through the narrow arched passage back to the outer cellar, he laughed, and he says, “Now, we’ll get rid of the incubus, Burdon. Fix your light up there, and I’ll help.”
He did help; and together we got a heap of sawdust and hundreds of empty wine-bottles; and these we built up at the end of the arched entrance between the cellars from floor to ceiling, just as if it had been a wine-bin, till the farther cellar was quite shut off with empty bottles. And then, if he didn’t make me move the new sherry that had just come in and treat that the same, building up full bottles in front of the empty ones till the ceiling was reached once more, and the way in to the chests of gold plate shut up with wine-bottles two deep, one stack full, the other empty.
He saw me shake my head, as if I didn’t believe in it; and he laughed again in his strange way, and said: “Wait a bit.”
Next morning I found he’d given orders, for the men came with a load of bricks and mortar, and they set to work and built up a wall in front of the stacked-up bottles, regularly bricking up the passage, just as if it was a bin of wine that was to be left for so many years to mature; after which the wall was white-washed over, the men went away, and Sir John clapped me on the shoulder. “There, Burdon!” he said; “we’ve buried the incubus safely. Now you can sleep in peace.”
Story 2—Chapter II.
Why Edward Gunning Left.
It’s curious how things get forgotten by busy people. In a few weeks I left off thinking about the hiding-place of all that golden plate; and after a time I used to go into that first cellar for wine with my half-dozen basket in one hand, my cellar candlestick in the other, and never once think about there being a farther cellar; while, though there was the strong-room in my pantry with quite a thousand pounds-worth of silver in it—perhaps more—I never fancied anybody would come for that.