"Just after Moore was attacked I heard a sound like a quick footstep, and having certain suspicions of my own, made a dash for the cellar. I found there was no cellar under the north wing; but toward the west, and directly beneath the dining-room, was a door. As I opened it all was dark; but my eyes soon accustomed themselves to the light, and I made out a good-sized chamber--and what I took for a man near the farther end. I remained silent, pretending I had seen nothing, and, closing the door, made a movement back up the cellar stairs. There I waited for about five minutes. The ruse worked. The door of the chamber opened, and a man, dressed in a dark cloak and a mask, partly emerged, and, I _thought_, started for the other stairs at the west end of the cellar. I jumped and grappled with him, but he struck me with the butt end of a revolver, and I was dazed; in another minute, he was punishing me severely. I fired two shots, then he threw me away from him and disappeared. He was stronger than anyone I ever met," said Oakes, apologetically, "a regular demon, and he got in the first blow. I think I wounded him, however." "What shall we do?" said Moore. "Go quickly and investigate," was the answer. "Here, Mike, you lead the way." Mike did not hesitate. If playing a game, he did it well. "Want a gun?" said Oakes. "No, sorr, not if youse all are armed. Guess we can give him all the scrap he wants." We descended the stairs, Oakes last, as became his condition. He touched Moore and myself, and pointed to Mike. "Watch him; he may be already armed," he whispered. The cellar was lighted by one window at the western end. A door at the same end, which evidently led to some stairs, was padlocked, and, as Oakes said, had not been recently opened. The dust lay upon it undisturbed and the padlock was very rusty. This corroborated Mike's story. The door above that opened on the ground. It was boarded up, he said. No means was found of passing beneath the dance hall, as Oakes had said. From the lay of the ground, we concluded that the cellar was very low there and not bottomed--a shut-in affair such as one finds in old buildings of the Colonial epoch. Across the cellar, to the other side--the south--the same thing pertained except at the western extremity under the dining-room; there a door opened into a cellar room or chamber. "Here! take this," said Oakes, handing Mike a small pocket taper. "Light it." Mike did as told, and stepped into the room, I after him. Oakes held the cellar door open, and I, happening to look at him, saw that he was watching Mike as a cat watches a mouse. He had dropped a match at the moment, and, with his eye still on the gardener, stooped to pick it up. His hand made a swift, double movement, he had the match and something else besides; but Mike had not observed, and I, of course, said nothing. The room was low and without windows, but the air was remarkably clean and fresh. "Plenty of ventilation in here," said I.