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will defend us from the damps.”
    Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
    “Drink,” I said, presenting him the wine.
    He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.
    “I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”
    “And I to your long life.”
    He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
    “These vaults,” he said, “are extensive.”
    “The Montresors,” I replied, “were a great and numerous family.”
    “I forget your arms.”
    “A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.”
    “And the motto?”
    “Nemo me impune lacessit.”
6
    “Good!” he said.
    The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piledbones, with casks and puncheons 7 intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
    “The nitre!” I said; “see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river’s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough——”
    “It is nothing,” he said; “let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc.”
    I broke and reached him a flagonof De Grâve. 8 He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upward with a gesticulation I did not understand.
    I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement—a grotesque one.
    “You do not comprehend?” he said.
    “Not I,” I replied.
    “Then you are not of the brotherhood.”
    “How?”
    “You are not of the masons.”
    “Yes, yes,” I said; “yes, yes.”
    “You? Impossible! A mason?”
    “A mason,” I replied.
    “A sign,” he said.
    “It is this,” I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my
roquelaire.
    “You jest,” he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “But let us proceed to the Amontillado.”
    “Be it so,” I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
    At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
    It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
    “Proceed,” I said; “herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi——”
    “He is an ignoramus,” interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a