“Excellent!”
“I’ve brought some things already. The lock’s rusty. There it goes. There are rats. I hope you don’t mind rats.”
The door swung in, silently, as though the hinges had been recently oiled; as indeed they had, but not by the boy.
“It’s rather dirty,” he explained. “You go down steps first. Be very careful.”
He extended an earthy hand and led the old man down. “It’s dark here, but there’s a room below; quite a good room. And I have candles.”
Truly a room. Built of old brick, and damp, but with a free circulation of air. Old Adelbert stared about him. It was not entirely dark. A bit of light entered from the aperture at the head of the steps. By it, even before Bobby had lighted his candle, he saw the broken chair, the piece of old carpet, and the odds and ends the child had brought.
“I cook down here sometimes,” said Bobby, struggling with matches that had felt the damp. “But it is very smoky. I should like to have a stove. You don’t know where I can get a secondhand stove, do you? with a long pipe?”
Old Adelbert felt curiously shaken. “None have visited this place since you have been here?” he asked.
“I don’t suppose any one knows about it. Do you?”
“Those who built it, perhaps. But it is old, very old. It is possible—”