idea what he meant till we went down-stairs, when he had the
strong-room door opened and the cellar too and then he made me help him
carry the old plate-chests right through my pantry into the far
wine-cellar, and range them one after the other along one side.

I wanted to tell him that they would not be so safe there; but I daren't
speak, and it was not till what followed that I began to understand;
for, as soon as we had gone through the narrow arched passage back to
the outer cellar, he laughed, and he says, "Now, we'll get rid of the
incubus, Burdon. Fix your light up there, and I'll help."

He did help; and together we got a heap of sawdust and hundreds of empty
wine-bottles; and these we built up at the end of the arched entrance
between the cellars from floor to ceiling, just as if it had been a
wine-bin, till the farther cellar was quite shut off with empty bottles.
And then, if he didn't make me move the new sherry that had just come
in and treat that the same, building up full bottles in front of the
empty ones till the ceiling was reached once more, and the way in to the
chests of gold plate shut up with wine-bottles two deep, one stack full,
the other empty.

He saw me shake my head, as if I didn't believe in it; and he laughed
again in his strange way, and said: "Wait a bit."

Next morning I found he'd given orders, for the men came with a load of
bricks and mortar, and they set to work and built up a wall in front of
the stacked-up bottles, regularly bricking up the passage, just as if it
was a bin of wine that was to be left for so many years to mature; after
which the wall was white-washed over, the men went away, and Sir John
clapped me on the shoulder. "There, Burdon!" he said; "we've buried the
incubus safely. Now you can sleep in peace."

STORY TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

WHY EDWARD GUNNING LEFT.

It's curious how things get forgotten by busy people. In a few weeks I
left off thinking about the hiding-place of all that golden plate; and
after a time I used to go into that first cellar for wine with my
half-dozen basket in one hand, my cellar candlestick in the other, and
never once think about there being a farther cellar; while, though there
was the strong-room in my pantry with quite a thousand pounds-worth of
silver in it--perhaps more--I never fancied anybody would come for that.

Master Barclay came, and went back to school, and Sir John grew more
strange; and then an old friend of his d