sted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and
the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval
Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted
their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large
mangle.

"It's like a double coffin," said Oswald, as the match went out. "You
can take my arm if you like, Dentist."

The Dentist did--and then afterwards he said he only did it because he
thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.

"It's only for a little while," said Oswald in the pauses of the
barrel-thunder, "and I once read about two brothers confined for life in
a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit,
lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things."

"Yes," said Denny; "but I'd rather keep on standing if it's the same to
you, Oswald. I don't like spiders--not much, that is."

"You are right," said Oswald with affable gentleness; "and there might
be toads perhaps in a vault like this--or serpents guarding the treasure
like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn't have cobras in
England. They'd have to put up with vipers, I suppose."

Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and
then on the other.

"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit," he said, but
Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.

And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces
through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald
really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing
serpents put there to guard the entrance.

"Like a sort of live booby-trap," he explained; "just the sort of thing
a magician or a witch would have thought of doing."

But it was only dust and cobwebs--a thick, damp mat of them.

Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the
perils Oswald had led Denny into--I mean through, with Mr. Red House and
another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over
everybody's hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary
confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny's solitary
confinement was at an end, too--and he was now able to stand on both
legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude.

"This _is_ a find," said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. "Do you
know, we've been in this house six whole months and a bit, and _we_
never thought of there