Varney, meanwhile, had lurked behind on the stairs; but hearing the door barred, he now came up on tiptoe, and Foster, winking to him, pointed with self-complacence to a piece of concealed machinery in the wall, which, playing with much ease and little noise, dropped a part of the wooden gallery, after the manner of a drawbridge, so as to cut off all communication between the door of the bedroom, which he usually inhabited, and the landing-place of the high, winding stair which ascended to it.  The rope by which this machinery was wrought was generally carried within the bedchamber, it being Foster’s object to provide against invasion from without; but now that it was intended to secure the prisoner within, the cord had been brought over to the landing-place, and was there made fast, when Foster with much complacency had dropped the unsuspected trap-door.

Varney looked with great attention at the machinery, and peeped more than once down the abyss which was opened by the fall of the trap-door.  It was dark as pitch, and seemed profoundly deep, going, as Foster informed his confederate in a whisper, nigh to the lowest vault of the Castle.  Varney cast once more a fixed and long look down into this sable gulf, and then followed Foster to the part of the manor-house most usually inhabited.

When they arrived in the parlour which we have mentioned, Varney requested Foster to get them supper, and some of the choicest wine.  “I will seek Alasco,” he added; “we have work for him to do, and we must put him in good heart.”

Foster groaned at this intimation, but made no remonstrance.  The old woman assured Varney that Alasco had scarce eaten or drunken since her master’s departure, living perpetually shut up in the laboratory, and talking as if the world’s continuance depended on what he was doing there.

“I will teach him that the world hath other claims on him,” said Varney, seizing a light, and going in quest of the alchemist.  He returned, after a considerable absence, very pale, but yet with his habitual sneer on his cheek and nostril.  “Our friend,” he said, “has exhaled.”

“How!—­what mean you?” said Foster—­“run away—­fled with my forty pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand-fold?  I will have Hue and Cry!”

“I will tell thee a surer way,” said Varney.

“How!—­which way?” exclaimed Foster; “I will have back my forty pounds—­I deemed them as surely a thousand times multiplied—­I will have back my in-put, at the least.”

“Go hang thyself, then, and sue Alasco in the Devil’s Court of Chancery, for thither he has carried the cause.”

“How!—­what dost thou mean is he dead?”

“Ay, truly is he,” said Varney; “and properly swollen already in the face and body.  He had been mixing some of his devil’s medicines, and the glass mask which he used constantly had fallen from his face, so that the subtle poison entered the brain, and did its work.”