Descending the steps, he found himself in the small, musty cellar. The vault-like room was empty save for a couple of barrels standing in a corner and a small pile of firewood under the stairs that led to regions above. Selecting a faggot of kindling-wood from this pile, he fashioned a torch by whittling the end into a confusion of partially detached slivers. This he lighted with a match, and then mounted the stairs. The door at the head opened at the lifting of an old-fashioned latch. A thick screen of cobwebs almost closed the upper half of the aperture. He burnt it away with the flaming torch, and passed on into the kitchen. He was grateful for the snapping fire of the faggot, for otherwise the silence of the grave would have fallen about him as he stood motionless for a moment peering about the empty room. No light penetrated from the outside. The air was dead. Spiders had clothed the corners and the ceiling with their silk, over which the dust of years lay thick and ugly. He felt, with a queer little shiver, that the eyes of a thousand spiders peered gloatingly down upon him from the murky fastnesses. He hurried on. The rooms on the lower floor had been stripped of all signs of habitation. His footsteps resounded throughout the house. Boards creaked under his tread. Without actually realizing what he was doing, he began to tiptoe toward the stairway that led to the upper floor. He laughed at himself for this precaution, and yet could not rid himself of the feeling that some one was listening, that the stealth of the midnight burglar was necessary. The stairs groaned under his weight, the dust-covered banister cracked loudly when he laid his hand upon it. He had the strange notion that they were sounding the alarm to some guardian occupant of the premises,--to a slumbering ghost perhaps. He came at last to the room where Alix and David had played at book-writing. In the centre stood a kitchen table, on either side of which was a rudely constructed bench,--evidently the handiwork of David Strong. Two strips of rag carpet served as a rug. At each end of the table was a candlestick containing a half-used tallow candle. There was a single ink pot, but there were two penholders beside it, and a couple of blue blotters. Nearby were two ancient but substantial rocking chairs,--singularly out of place,--no doubt discarded survivors of long-distant days of comfort, rescued from an attic storeroom by the young trespassers. A scrap basket, half-full of torn and crumpled sheets of paper, stood conveniently near the table.