“Your lordship will allow that it is better than a police cell. This way. Shall I go first? Mind how you come. It’s only a ladder.” Lord St. Austell followed without hesitation, but he was not so dull as to ignore the fact that his errand was becoming more dangerous than he had expected. He followed to the first cellar, to which a faint light penetrated through a grating below what had once been the shop window. Goodhare, after listening for a few moments to be sure that no tread of a passer-by was audible on the stone pavement outside, pushed open a door on the right and climbed down into a lower cellar which was as much overheated as the upper one was too cold. The ruddy glow of a fire was seen at once on floor and ceiling, and a gust of air hot as the breath of a furnace, seemed almost to sear the wet, cold faces of the two men as they entered. “Good heavens! I shall never be able to stay down here,” exclaimed the earl, stepping back from the huge square iron grate, like the cage of an ancient beacon, which stood in the middle of the floor, and in which blazed an enormous fire. “Oh, you will manage it as long as I want to keep you,” said Amos, quietly. He drew the door close and made it fast with a rough bolt, while Lord St. Austell examined the cellar in which he found himself, which Amos not inaptly termed a den. There was no boarding on the floor, nothing but the rough earth. The walls were only bricked in about half-way down, as if the cellar had been dug out after the house was built. A piece of sacking on the floor, two benches, a dirty sofa, and deal table covered with tools and lumber, formed all the furniture. The earl looked attentively at a huge melting-pot which stood before the fire. “That,” said Goodhare, “was what the gold crowns from the Tower were melted in.” The coolness with which he said this caused Lord St. Austell to look round at his companion. He was startled by the change in him. Instead of the stooping, lean librarian, with the shabby coat and cringing manner, he saw a well-dressed, dignified man, with trim grey beard--the counterpart of himself. One great difference there was between them, one only. The earl’s eyes looked out upon the world with the cynical and languid interest of a man who has tasted and tired of every human pleasure; those of his companion glowed with the ferocity of a wild beast interrupted in a meal of human flesh. “Why, Amos, rascality seems to agree with you!” exclaimed St. Lord Austell. Goodhare laughed harshly. “Rascality is perhaps too strong a word, as your lordship will perhaps allow when I point out one particular feature of the transactions in which I have lately been engaged. I began, as perhaps you have not yet heard, by taking a little sum that was lying idle on your lordship’s property at Carstow. It was in old-fashioned gold, but I managed, with some difficulty, to get it converted into the current coin of to-day.”