“But where does it go to, Squire Woodcock? I don’t like the looks of it.”
“Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Pushing his florid corpulence into the mysterious aperture, the elderly Squire led the way up steep stairs of stone, hardly two feet in width, till they reached a little closet, or rather cell, built into the massive main wall of the mansion, and ventilated and dimly lit by two little sloping slits, ingeniously concealed without, by their forming the sculptured mouths of two griffins cut in a great stone tablet decorating that external part of the dwelling. A mattress lay rolled up in one corner, with a jug of water, a flask of wine, and a wooden trencher containing cold roast beef and bread.
“And I am to be buried alive here?” said Israel, ruefully looking round.
“But your resurrection will soon be at hand,” smiled the Squire; “two days at the furthest.”
“Though to be sure I was a sort of prisoner in Paris, just as I seem about to be made here,” said Israel, “yet Doctor Franklin put me in a better jug than this, Squire Woodcock. It was set out with boquets and a mirror, and other fine things. Besides, I could step out into the entry whenever I wanted.”
“Ah, but, my hero, that was in France, and this is in England. There you were in a friendly country: here you are in the enemy’s. If you should be discovered in my house, and your connection with me became known, do you know that it would go very hard with me; very hard indeed?”
“Then, for your sake, I am willing to stay wherever you think best to put me,” replied Israel.
“Well, then, you say you want boquets and a mirror. If those articles will at all help to solace your seclusion, I will bring them to you.”
“They really would be company; the sight of my own face particularly.”