"A truce to your tongue, woman," said her husband impatiently. "Where did you say was the door the lad broke through?" When she had told him he sat for a moment in deep thought, then brought his great fist down on the table with a blow which made every platter on the shelves rattle. "How now, man!" said his wife with a start. "Wouldst thou bring the house down around our ears?" "I mind not of the house now," he replied eagerly; "but this I know--if they are in the dungeon under the east tower, and have opened the door into the old cellarer’s vault, by our Lady, there is not ten feet of solid earth betwixt us and them, as sure as I am Dick Redwood!" Both of his auditors were much surprised at this sudden declaration, and the dame even forgot her stew-pans in her curiosity. "Twenty-five years ago," continued the soldier, turning to his guest, "before ever I knew Joan Gilfoy yonder, I was ever ready for a light job that was well paid for, and knew how to hold my tongue about it when it was done. Often one would come to me and say: ’Dick, here is a bit of work and a noble for thee, and if thou forgettest all about it, at the end of the year thou shalt have another.’ So I know many a thing about this country that few, if any, others do; but never did anything come to hand so well as this." "How is it? Tell us now, for mercy’s sake," said Bertrand as the soldier paused. "Why, you see," replied the Captain, "in the old time, before Mother Beatrice’s day, they led a different life at the convent from what they do now. But though the prioress was easy herself, she was not enough so for some of the sisters. They wanted to come out sometimes and take a walk in the woods by moonlight; so they got me and two others--dead and gone long ago in the French wars,--to mine a way for them, opening by one end into the entrance to the cellarer’s vault, under the east tower, and by the other under the bank at the spring, where the convent wall runs along the edge of the precipice. It is many years now since they made the beer-vault on the other side for fear of the damp, and when the new prioress came, all the nuns’ fine walks were stopped; so I warrant you there is not one in the convent now who knows aught of it. If the way be not too much stopped up with rubbish, I could walk, in half an hour, from here straight into the lads’ prison--that is, if they know how to open the door, for the spring is on the other side."