Even the milkman may have been.
But I do not owe you half a crown.

For the terms of the bet were, I think, as follows, as I propounded them, that wherever that milkman came to a real stop I should find out something curious." "Well ?" I said.
"Well," he answered, "I jolly well have.

You just come with me," and before I could speak he had turned tail once more and whisked through the blue dark into the moat or basement of the house.

I followed almost before I made any decision.
When we got down into the area I felt indescribably foolish literally, as the saying is, in a hole.

There was nothing but a closed door, shuttered windows, the steps down which we had come, the ridiculous well in which I found myself, and the ridiculous man who had brought me there, and who stood there with dancing eyes.