Slowly and painfully I saved what I could, and was setting myself to make good the rest, when my ears caught a strange sound below my feet.

It was a beating sound, followed by the dull fall of something, and, on listening, it came and went every two or three minutes.
I had guessed more than once before now that under the house was a cellar, although I had never been there, nor, indeed, knew how to approach it.

For there was no opening, front or back, to the outer world that I knew of, and, if there at all, it must be pitch-dark and hard to breathe in.

And yet the noise I now heard, if it came from anywhere, came from below.

I looked about carefully, hoping for a crack in the floor through which to solve the mystery.