He turned the lantern and blew it out as he spoke. The rest of us crouched down and held our breath. For ten seconds, perhaps, we heard the deep, rough voices of men in the rooms above us. Then the trap-door opened suddenly, and a beam of light fell upon the pavement not five yards from where we stood. At the same moment a shaggy head peered through the aperture, and a man cast a quick glance downward to the cellar.
"No," said the man, as though speaking to some one behind him, "it's been took, as I told you."
To which the other voice answered:
"Well more blarmed fool you for not corking good rum when you see it!"
They closed the trap upon the words, and we breathed once more. The lesson they had taught us could not be forgotten. We were sobered men when we lighted the lantern with one of Seth Barker's matches, and turned it again on the doctor's face.
"In whispers, if you please," said I, "as few as you like. We are in a tight place, my lads, and talk won't get us out of it. It's the doctor first and ourselves afterwards, remember."
Dr. Gray, truly, was a little better by this time, and sitting up like a dazed man, he looked first at Dolly Venn and then at his foot, and last of all at the strange place in which he lay.
"Why, yes," he exclaimed at last, "I remember; a cut and a fool who walked on it. It serves me right, and the end is better than the beginning."
"The lad did it," said I; "he was always a wonder with linen and the scissors, was Dolly Venn."
"To say nothing of a square foot of my shirt," put in Peter Bligh, obstinately. "'Tis worth while getting a bit of a cut, doctor, just to see Dolly Venn sew it up again."