"Ah! if so be as the masons does come to pull its old carcass about, there'll be some fine things made known to the world. Them cellars down stairs, in which a man might hide for fifty years and never be smelt out by the police, will turn up a bone or two, I rather suspect; and not of a sheep, nor a pig, nor a bull neither."
"Why—half the silly folks in this neighbourhood are afeerd to come here even in the daytime, because they say it's haunted," observed Bill, after a brief pause. "But, for my part, I shouldn't be frightened to come here at all hours of the night, and sit here alone too, even if every feller as was scragged at Tyburn or Newgate, and every one wot has been tumbled down these holes into the Fleet, was to start up, and——"
The man stopped short, turned ghastly pale, and fell back stupified and speechless in his chair. His pipe dropped from between his fingers, and broke to pieces upon the floor.
"What the devil's the matter now?" demanded his companion, casting an anxious glance around.
"There! there! don't you see——," gasped the terrified ruffian, pointing towards the little window looking into the next room.
"It's only some d——d gammon of Crankey Jem," ejaculated Dick, who was more courageous in such matters than his companion. "I'll deuced soon put that to rights!"
Seizing the candle, he was hurrying towards the door, when his comrade rushed after him, crying, "No—I won't be left in the dark! I can't bear it! Damme, if you go, I'll go with you!"
The two villains accordingly proceeded together into the next room.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRAP-DOOR.
THE youthful stranger had listened with ineffable surprise and horror to the conversation of the two ruffians. His nerves had been worked up by all the circumstances of the evening to a tone bordering upon madness—to that pitch, indeed, when it appeared as if there were no alternative left save to fall upon the floor and yield to the delirium tremens of violent emotions.