So he put it down to "that," and produced some pleasant mental pictures out of the fancy. When the midday meal was over, he said, "Duchess, this money's for you. It's been sent because you've got a pretty face, and pretty hands, and bright eyes. And it's going to take us into the country, where the flowers are all a-growing and a-blowing, and where you'll get strong and lively again." "Then it _will_ come true," cried Sally, "what you saw in the ten-pound note!" "It will come true, Sally, if we're alive to-morrow." An ecstatic silence followed, broken by Sally. "Then you know who sent the money, Daddy!" "It was sent by a lady--as handsome a lady as ever you clapped eyes on, Sally." "And you've seen her?" "Well--hum!--yes, I've seen her." And here Seth rubbed his forehead, denoting that he meant he had seen her in his mind's eye--a salve to his conscience. "Where does she live?" asked Sally, whom it was difficult to stop, when she commenced to make inquiries on an interesting theme. "She lives in--hum!--in Fairyland." "Oh, where's that?" "Don't ask any more questions. You'll see a bit of it to-morrow." CHAPTER XVI. The following day a sensation was created in Rosemary Lane by the circumstance of Seth Dumbrick's stall being closed, and by a written notice pasted outside, to the effect that he might be expected to return in the course of two or three weeks. "From the day as Seth Dumbrick give that party to the children," said Mrs. Preedy, holding forth in front of the cellar to a knot of eager listeners, "down in that cellar"--with finger ominously pointing--"from that day I begun to suspect him, and to feel sure as there was something wrong I says to him on that very day, Strange things is often done down in cellars,' says I; and then I told him that I wouldn't let my Jane go to his party unless I were invited, no, not if he filled my apron with diamings. 'Perhaps,' says I, with mind full of misbegivings, 'perhaps you've got ghosts and skiletons down in your cellar, Mr. Dumbrick;' and as true as I'm a living woman, he says to me upon that, 'My cellar _is_ full of ghosts, Mrs. Preedy,' says he; 'my cellar _is_ full of ghosts,' he says." This narrative imparted a more intense interest to the position of affairs, and imagination ran riot on the contents of the cellar, which became gradually filled with the bones and limbs of murdered persons--Seth Dumbrick's victims, who had been artfully decoyed down the steps and made away with. "And it shows the wickedness of mankind," said one woman, especially disposed to the horrible, "to think of the way he's kept it secret all this time." Other imaginative phases relating to Sally and the Duchess, who were pictured as being either murdered or chained to the wall and left to starve, soon became popular; and ears were pressed to the shutters to catch the groans of the children.