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So we lived, we six-and-twenty, in the vault-like cellar of a great stone house, and we suffered each one of us, as if we had to bear on our shoulders the whole three storys of that house. But we had something else good, besides the singing something we loved, that perhaps took the place of the sunshine.
The vault-like chill of the place struck her afresh as she passed to the open door. And again involuntarily she shivered, quickening her steps, eager to leave the clammy atmosphere behind. Passing into the hot sunshine beyond the great nail-studded door was like entering another world. She turned her face up to the brightness and rejoiced.
She would chill her listeners with hints of The Tramp, evoke shrieks of laughter at her imitation of the porter. Darsie realised the fact, but for the moment it left her cold. Summer evenings have a trick of turning chill and damp after the sun is set, and the vault-like waiting-room was dreary enough to damp the highest spirits. How was she going to obtain that eightpence for a ticket?
I was admitted to her abode by an elderly woman of starched demeanour but agreeable visage, who ushered me into a spotless parlour, whereof the atmosphere was of that vault-like coldness peculiar to a room which is only inhabited on state occasions. Here the starched domestic left me while she carried my letter of introduction to her mistress.
"Come down, Dick, and I'll take a spell," Bill called up from below, and he obeyed. The big miner, without comment, climbed up, and again the vault-like space was filled with the persistent picking of steel on stone. For a half-hour it continued, and then, slowly, Bill descended.
After he had bound up his father's wounds, he might recover somewhat, so as to walk a little with assistance; and then the opening at the end of the passage was there, and freedom for them both, if the enemy had gone. But he had not reached that vault-like refuge yet, and the way seemed to be interminable.
A chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a saloon-dampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble basin beyond dropping, dropping, incessantly struck upon my ear like water trickling down the side of a cave.
There were weeks of melting to pass yet. But soon Inside, the vault-like store was warm enough. But it was dark, and squalid, and it reeked with the taint which only the centuries can impart. These things impressed themselves never so much upon Keeko as now, while she sat over the warming stove. She had just returned from Seal Bay. She had passed most of the winter on the trail with her Indians.
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.
He turned for relief to the dim fire that flickered like a votive taper in the vault-like hearth, and drew a chair towards it. In spite of the impatience and preoccupation of a lover, he found himself again and again recurring to the story he had just heard, until the vengeful spirit of the murdered Doctor seemed to darken and possess the house.
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