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Updated: May 22, 2025
Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to reckon with those devils down below. And we went downstairs and he stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up out o' that there. And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear 'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over there.
Sometimes, they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable, well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of cellar-steps to speak to somebody.
But in another moment they had reached the daylight at the foot of the cellar-steps, and before he cheerfully sprang up them, he blew out his candle and the superstition together. On the morning of the next day, Wilding went out alone, after leaving a message with his clerk. "If Mr. Vendale should ask for me," he said, "or if Mr. Bintrey should call, tell them I am gone to the Foundling."
Then he came to the castle where the daughter was ill; he took her on his shoulders, for she could not walk, and carried her down the cellar-steps and pulled out the toad's nest from beneath the lowest step and gave it into her hand, and she sprang off his shoulder and up the steps before him, and was quite cured.
"Oh! the fools!" said the Griffin; "the key lies in the wood- house under a log of wood behind the door." "And then he said that in another castle the daughter was ill, and they knew no remedy that would cure her." "Oh! the fools!" said the Griffin; "under the cellar-steps a toad has made its nest of her hair, and if she got her hair back she would be well."
To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub.
I recollect the sound of father's Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill- tempered look, on her knees, on her waist, until finally her face came into view, and settled the question.
Presently came slowly down the cellar-steps our senior partner in nankeen shanks, silk stockings and pumps a frosty-visaged old man, with a nose which had fully earned the right to be called bottle. Behind him limped our old porter in a blue check apron.
Then they lay down to sleep either on the mats on the floor or on the bundles of clothing which were stacked on the floor along the walls of the room. Hung Wapu now accompanied one of his Chinese guests up the cellar-steps to the street, and sitting down on the top step began to chat in a low voice with his apparently half-intoxicated countryman.
Here and there a flight of broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant bands; no wind or stringed instruments? No, not one.
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