“What did the conspirators want,” asked Keith after he had pondered the matter for a while.

“I don’t know exactly,” his mother admitted, “but the king was killed by one of them at last.”

“I wish I had been there to defend the king,” said Keith.  Then a new thought seized him suddenly:  “I want to go down and see those steps.”

“All right,” his mother answered to his astonishment and joy.  “Lena will soon go down to get potatoes for dinner, and then you can go along, if you only promise to come right up again.”

Shortly afterwards the momentous expedition actually took place.  Keith had been as far as the outer cellar door before, but he had never cared to go further.  When you opened that door, you were met by an air so cold and damp that it struck your face like a wet sheet, and the stairs fell away into a black abyss that seemed bottomless.

The door was of iron, rounded at the top to fit the arch, and covered with rust.  It looked as if it had been in its place since the house was built, and Keith had heard that the house could not be less than two hundred years old.  The key, which Keith had been permitted to carry going down, was of iron too, and nearly twice as long as Keith’s hand.  The lock was in keeping with the key, enormous in size and so stiff that Lena had to use both hands to turn the key.

Having laid a firm hold of Lena’s skirt, Keith followed her several steps down until they reached a place in the opposite wall where a single very tall step led up to another iron door, square-cut and narrow, back of which lay the cellar used by the Wellanders.  Lena lighted a candle that burned with difficulty in the clammy air.

Inside nothing could be seen at first but a number of boxes and barrels full of supplies, and back of them walls built out of enormous stone blocks and dripping with moisture.  As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, however, Keith perceived that the end toward the lane was closed by a wall which even his inexperienced glance recognized as brick and comparatively new.  Squeezing between two large barrels of potatoes he saw two stone steps at the foot of that wall and managed actually to put his foot on one of them.

“I wish I knew what’s back of that wall,” he remarked at last.

“Oh, nothing,” said Lena indifferently.

“There might be skeletons,” he ventured after a pause.

“Jesus Christ, child,” Lena almost screamed, looking as if she had caught sight of a ghost.  “Where in the world does he get such notions from?  Come out of here now.  I think the master will have to go down for potatoes himself hereafter.”

“There was a skeleton in the story you told me the other night,” Keith protested with dignity, but not unaffected by the girl’s unmistakable fright.

“This is no place for stories of that kind,” she declared pulling him away from the barrels and almost forgetting to close the cellar door behind her.