"But what's no laughing matter, Master George," he resumed, straightening his back once more, "is, that young Master Wilding has gone and changed the luck. Mark my words. He has changed the luck, and he'll find it out. _I_ ain't been down here all my life for nothing! _I_ know by what I notices down here, when it's a-going to rain, when it's a-going to hold up, when it's a-going to blow, when it's a-going to be calm. _I_ know, by what I notices down here, when the luck's changed, quite as well." "Has this growth on the roof anything to do with your divination?" asked Vendale, holding his light towards a gloomy ragged growth of dark fungus, pendent from the arches with a very disagreeable and repellent effect. "We are famous for this growth in this vault, aren't we?" "We are Master George," replied Joey Ladle, moving a step or two away, "and if you'll be advised by me, you'll let it alone." Taking up the rod just now laid across the two casks, and faintly moving the languid fungus with it, Vendale asked, "Ay, indeed? Why so?" "Why, not so much because it rises from the casks of wine, and may leave you to judge what sort of stuff a Cellarman takes into himself when he walks in the same all the days of his life, nor yet so much because at a stage of its growth it's maggots, and you'll fetch 'em down upon you," returned Joey Ladle, still keeping away, "as for another reason, Master George." "What other reason?" "(I wouldn't keep on touchin' it, if I was you, sir.) I'll tell you if you'll come out of the place. First, take a look at its colour, Master George." "I am doing so." "Done, sir. Now, come out of the place." He moved away with his light, and Vendale followed with his. When Vendale came up with him, and they were going back together, Vendale, eyeing him as they walked through the arches, said: "Well, Joey? The colour." "Is it like clotted blood, Master George?" "Like enough, perhaps." "More than enough, I think," muttered Joey Ladle, shaking his head solemnly. "Well, say it is like; say it is exactly like. What then?" "Master George, they do say--" "Who?" "How should I know who?" rejoined the Cellarman, apparently much exasperated by the unreasonable nature of the question. "Them! Them as says pretty well everything, you know. How should I know who They are, if you don't?" "True. Go on." "They do say that the man that gets by any accident a piece of that dark growth right upon his breast, will, for sure and certain, die by murder." As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman's eyes, which he had fastened on his light while dreamily saying those words, he suddenly became conscious of being struck upon his own breast by a heavy hand. Instantly following with his eyes the action of the hand that struck him--which was his companion's--he saw that it had beaten off his breast a web or clot of the fungus even then floating to the ground.