“No; the other father who took away the means of earning a livelihood.”
“Each for himself, you are right!” said the old man. “Very good, I will put you in the cellar.”
“I will go down there with Kolb. You must let me have a large pot for my pulp,” said David; then he continued, without noticing the quick look his father gave him,—“and you must find artichoke and asparagus stalks for me, and nettles, and the reeds that you cut by the stream side, and to-morrow morning I will come out of your cellar with some splendid paper.”
“If you can do that,” hiccoughed the “bear,” “I will let you have, perhaps—I will see, that is, if I can let you have—pshaw! twenty-five thousand francs. On condition, mind, that you make as much for me every year.”
“Put me to the proof, I am quite willing,” cried David. “Kolb! take the horse and go to Mansle, quick, buy a large hair sieve for me of a cooper, and some glue of the grocer, and come back again as soon as you can.”
“There! drink,” said old Séchard, putting down a bottle of wine, a loaf, and the cold remains of the dinner. “You will need your strength. I will go and look for your bits of green stuff; green rags you use for your pulp, and a trifle too green, I am afraid.”
Two hours later, towards eleven o’clock that night, David and Kolb took up their quarters in a little out-house against the cellar wall; they found the floor paved with runnel tiles, and all the apparatus used in Angoumois for the manufacture of Cognac brandy.
“Pans and firewood! Why, it is as good as a factory made on purpose!” cried David.
“Very well, good-night,” said old Séchard; “I shall lock you in, and let both the dogs loose; nobody will bring you any paper, I am sure. You show me those sheets to-morrow, and I give you my word I will be your partner and the business will be straightforward and properly managed.”
David and Kolb, locked into the distillery, spent nearly two hours in macerating the stems, using a couple of logs for mallets. The fire blazed up, the water boiled. About two o’clock in the morning, Kolb heard a sound which David was too busy to notice, a kind of deep breath like a suppressed hiccough. Snatching up one of the two lighted dips, he looked round the walls, and beheld old Séchard’s empurpled countenance filling up a square opening above a door hitherto hidden by a pile of empty casks in the cellar itself. The cunning old man had brought David and Kolb into his underground distillery by the outer door, through which the casks were rolled when full. The inner door had been made so that he could roll his puncheons straight from the cellar into the distillery, instead of taking them round through the yard.