A secret vault.
"'Tis a well-screened spot, is it not?" said Lee, answering Rumbold's inquiring glances.
"Well secured," said the cautious Rumbold, who had not much opinion of mere unaided twigs as safeguards, and seemed more disposed to admire the huge iron padlock adorning its latch. "What do you store here?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The place—except for a few bones, which may have been man's or sheep's for aught I know, or ever gave a thought to—is full of emptiness."
"Yet you keep it as sealed as if it shut in untold riches."
"As for the matter of that, it does, too, in a roundabout sort of way," said Lawrence smiling and colouring a little. "Or it may do so; for 'tis said—though I will not answer for the truth of it, that if you follow your nose far enough, the way it leads, you will find yourself in the vaults under your own gatehouse. Our houses—yours and mine—Master Rumbold, were built in queer times; when a man could not call his life his own. And when he dared not show his face above ground, slipped away as he could under it."
In darkness.
"And a fig then for his pursuers," said Rumbold, as he stepped into the vault, whose darkness was only lightened by the moon-rays feebly struggling in through the grating of a loophole high up in its walls. "A fig for them, hey?"