The rubbish being at last sufficiently cleared, Billy bent his head and dipped down the steps. Charlie Lee followed, and the fourteen were on their way. Silently and cautiously, as if he had been relieving a hen-roost of its superfluous inhabitants, Billy crept along, testing the foothold at every step. He came to the stairway up to the dungeon, pausing a moment, to listen. There was a great pow-wow overhead. The Smoutchies were in the seventh heaven of jubilation over the repulse of the enemy.
Suddenly somebody in the passage sneezed.
Billy turned to Charlie Lee. "If that man does that again, burke him!" he whispered.
Then with a firm step he mounted the final ascent of the secret stair. His head hit hard against the roof at the top. He had not remembered how Hugh John had told him that the exit was under the lowest part of the bottle dungeon.
"Bless that roof!" he muttered piously—more piously, perhaps, than could have been expected of him, considering his upbringing.
"If Billy Blythe says that again, burke him!" said a carefully disguised gruff voice from the back—evidently that of the late sneezer.
"Silence—or by the Lord I'll slay you!" returned Billy, in a hissing whisper.
There was the silence of the grave behind. Billy Blythe made himself much respected for the moral rectitude and true worth of his character.
One by one the fourteen stepped clear of the damp stairs, and stood in the wide circuit of the dungeon.