“We are Master George,” replied Joey Ladle, moving a step or two away, “and if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll let it alone.”

Taking up the rod just now laid across the two casks, and faintly moving the languid fungus with it, Vendale asked, “Ay, indeed?  Why so?”

“Why, not so much because it rises from the casks of wine, and may leave you to judge what sort of stuff a Cellarman takes into himself when he walks in the same all the days of his life, nor yet so much because at a stage of its growth it’s maggots, and you’ll fetch ’em down upon you,” returned Joey Ladle, still keeping away, “as for another reason, Master George.”

“What other reason?”

“(I wouldn’t keep on touchin’ it, if I was you, sir.) I’ll tell you if you’ll come out of the place.  First, take a look at its colour, Master George.”

“I am doing so.”

“Done, sir.  Now, come out of the place.”

He moved away with his light, and Vendale followed with his.  When Vendale came up with him, and they were going back together, Vendale, eyeing him as they walked through the arches, said:  “Well, Joey?  The colour.”

“Is it like clotted blood, Master George?”

“Like enough, perhaps.”

“More than enough, I think,” muttered Joey Ladle, shaking his head solemnly.

“Well, say it is like; say it is exactly like.  What then?”

“Master George, they do say—­”

“Who?”

“How should I know who?” rejoined the Cellarman, apparently much exasperated by the unreasonable nature of the question.  “Them!  Them as says pretty well everything, you know.  How should I know who They are, if you don’t?”

“True.  Go on.”

“They do say that the man that gets by any accident a piece of that dark growth right upon his breast, will, for sure and certain, die by murder.”

As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman’s eyes, which he had fastened on his light while dreamily saying those words, he suddenly became conscious of being struck upon his own breast by a heavy hand.  Instantly following with his eyes the action of the hand that struck him—­which was his companion’s—­he saw that it had beaten off his breast a web or clot of the fungus even then floating to the ground.

For a moment he turned upon the Cellarman almost as scared a look as the Cellarman turned upon him.  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.

EXIT WILDING

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.”  All that his partner had said to him, all that his lawyer, following on the same side, could urge, had left him persisting unshaken in his own point of view.  To find the lost man, whose place he had usurped, was now the paramount interest of his life, and to inquire at the Foundling was plainly to take the first step in the direction of discovery.  To the Foundling, accordingly, the wine-merchant now went.