"While you are doing this, I will take a little walk in this underground paradise."
And Lord Grazian took his lantern on his maimed right arm and limped off through the dark, winding underground passage, counting his steps as he went. When he had counted five hundred and forty steps, he found himself in front of that cavern where the great cask stood, all covered over with green. He raised the cover; under this was a thick layer of wax that he bored through with his knife. The cask contained what he had supposed at the first glance—gunpowder.
He gathered up a little of the dust and scattered it over his torch, it blazed up; the gunpowder had been kept dry through these centuries under its layer of wax. Then he unbuttoned his coat, and brought out a long cotton fuse which he had wound around his waist a number of times. With his left hand and his teeth, he fastened this fuse to this match hanging at the bunghole of the cask; then he walked back, drawing the fuse after him—it was just five hundred and forty yards long. When he came to the end, he lighted the fuse, and noted by his watch how long it took to burn one yard—just one minute. How many hours are there in five hundred and forty minutes? That was too much for his head; Master Mathias would tell him.
When he returned, the wall was done, and Master Mathias was busy smoothing it off around the open space. It was strange that Grazian had not thought of this—what if Father Peter so walled up had made an arrangement with Master Mathias, during Grazian's absence, and by entreaties, threats and promises, persuaded him to make known his fate; or had he thought of this? Was that the purpose of the fuse, or was it for something quite different?
"Are you through, my good friend? Tell me how many times sixty goes in five hundred and forty?"
"Six times nine make fifty-four, so nine times."
"Quite right. Six times nine makes fifty-four. The table of ones was more than I could ever get. Yes, nine times—that is quite enough. Now I too shall be ready soon. Do you go to the agent's house, make a good fire on the hearth, spread the table, and prepare our supper. I will stay here a little longer to take leave of my son."
When the major-domo had gone, Grazian went back into the church. He lifted the casks of money from the carriage and rolled them along the passage-way to the space just walled in. When they were all piled up together, he stuck his hand in the opening:
"Greetings, my beloved son-in-law, Father Peter; how do you fare on your wedding day? You have won a beautiful bride, I must acknowledge. You shall not say you led hence my only daughter with only what she had on her back. I will be a generous father and give her her inheritance from both father and mother. Was ever father-in-law so good as I?"
Then he opened one of the casks and laid it with his left hand on his wounded right arm. He smothered the pain that this caused him and shook the silver shower of dollars down into the cavern; he did the same with all the casks that contained silver money.