“Humph! Strange,” he says; and then we went straight to the cellar, the great baize door at the top of the kitchen steps being shut; and directly after we were standing on the damp sawdust with the bins of wine all round.
“It hasn’t been touched, apparently, and there seems to be no need; but I should like to see if it is all right. But we shall never get through there, Burdon,” he says, looking at the bricked-up wall, across the way to the inner cellar.
“I don’t know,” I said, taking off my coat and rolling up my sleeves, to find that though the highest price had been paid for that bricklaying, the cheat of a fellow who had the job had used hardly a bit of sand and bad lime, so that, after I had loosened one brick and levered it out, all the others came away one at a time quite clear of the mortar.
“Never mind,” says Sir John. “Out of evil comes good. I’ll try that sherry too, Burdon, and we’ll put some fresh in its place. But if that’s left twenty years, we shall never live to taste it, eh?”
I shook my head sadly as I worked away in that arch, easily reaching the top bricks, which were only six feet from the sawdust; and, as is often the case, what had seemed a terrible job proved to be easy.
“There,” he says; “the place will be sweeter now. We’ll just have a glance at the old chests, and then we must build up the empty bottles again. To-morrow, I’ll order in some more wine—for my son.”
He said that last so solemnly that I looked up at him as he stood there with the light shining in his eyes.
“As’ll come back some day, sorry for the past, Sir John,” I said, “and ready to do what you wish.”
“Please God, Burdon!” he says, bowing his head for a bit. Then he looked up quite sharply, and took a candle, and I the other. “Come along,” he says in his old, quiet, stern way; and I was half afraid I had offended him, as he stepped in at the opening and stood at the mouth of the inner cellar. Then I heard him give a sharp sniff; and I smelt it too—that same odour of burnt oil. We neither of us spoke as we walked over the damp black sawdust, both thinking of the likelihood of foul air being in the place; but we found we could breathe all right; and as we held up the candles, the light shone on the black-looking old chests, every one with its padlocks and seals all right, just as we had left them all those years before.
I looked up at Sir John, and he gave me a satisfied nod as he tried one of the seals, and then we both stood as if turned to stone, for from just at my feet there came a dull knocking sound, and as I looked down, I could see the black sawdust shake.