"From where?"
"Bless us! Ay, from Ware, for aught I know. Come, Ruth, an' you won't touch bit nor sup, let's to bed," and Maudlin rose yawning from her chair, and crossed with the aid of her stout silver-headed staff to the foot of a broad oaken staircase at the other end of the apartment. "Ho, you! Barnaby lad. A light here!" she cried in shrill tones, rapping the end of her stick vigorously on the bare polished floor. "A light here, I say! Plague seize Sleepyhead!" she grumbled on, when no response was forthcoming; "Snorin' away in his owl's roost a'ready, I'll dare swear. Barnaby! Barnaby!"
"Nay," said Ruth, pointing up the staircase, to where the moonbeams streaming in through the criss-cross mullioned panes, flooded all the length of a long gallery to almost the clearness of day, "We want no light but that;" and followed at a more sober pace by Maudlin, she tripped up the stairs towards a door opening into a circular stone chamber, whose vaulted roof was supported in its centre by a huge pillar of roughly-hewn stone, graced about its base with rusty iron rings, and remnants of chain, whilst a concourse of plethoric-looking sacks lay stacked about the floor, which was of grayish flags seamed and worn as if by the ceaseless tread of feet, especially round the pillar.
Icy chill the air struck in this place; and with no little shivering and shuddering old Maudlin hurried on through it as fast as her rheumatic twinges permitted. "'Tis a cruel shame!" she muttered, and the observation was by no means a novel one in her mouth, "that you can't get snug between the sheets without first catchin' your death o' cold; and havin' your wits all terrified out o' you with passin' through that gruesome den." Not, however, till she was well clear of the vaulted chamber, and had gained the corridor beyond, did Maudlin indulge in the latter part of her running commentary. "Marry! I come goose-flesh from top to toe when I think of all the poor souls those walls have seen die an' rot."
"Nay," said Ruth, "but that was only the Debtors' Prison, where the poor creatures were kept when they couldn't pay their rents and their tithes to the great lords and barons who used to live here. The state prison—"
"Lord forgive us!" shuddered Maudlin, "and state that poor skeleton Master Lockit says they found there was in, you may depend. Every bone rheumatics and lumbago, I doubt Ugh! Yes, I know. It lies down below water-mark, and opens into the underway that runs to Nether Hall."
"Ah! nonsense, Maudlin," laughed Ruth. "That's an old wives' tale."
"And what if it be, quotha?" bridled Maudlin. "What if it be? Aren't old wives' tales as good as young maids' tittle-tattle? I tell thee, child, as sure as we stand here there's a clear way beneath us; though it may have as many twists and crinkum crankums, I grant ye, as a half-scotched adder—all the mile and a half to Nether Hall. But him that's a mind for tryin' o't, 'll find himself when he's done, in the cellar beneath the ruined tower that's nearest the Hall, an' turnin', as one may call it, head to tail about, he'll be back again by the moat dungeon-door, down just under our feet Unless he likes to stop short by the deep black hole in the wall, which Master Lockit has it—and, as times go, he's a fair truthbider, though his tales are a'most as long as our cat's—Master Lockit has it, opens up into your father's sleeping chamber. But hark ye, Ruth, now don't you be telling young Lee about all that, mind; or he'll be for tryin' of it There's not a venturesomer harebrain than he in all the shire, let him once set his mind to a thing."
"I doubt," carelessly smiled Ruth, "he knows the fine tale well enough."
"Tale! Tale again! Well, well, and he's pleased to think it so 'tisn't Maudlin 'd have him taught better. More by token that there's death in it."