Through cellar after cellar he made his tortuous way, past bins and racks of wine, between casks and cases stacked high to the groined roof. The air was thick and musty and great rats scampered away at the approach of the flickering yellow light and the hurried footsteps.
Then the air grew cooler, and Dasso stopped and, raising his lantern, searched the walls round him. A few stone steps led up to an opening, through which with stooping shoulders the man passed. Here he was in a tunnel, a narrow tube, that rose gradually until the fugitive could feel the cool airs of the night upon his face, and he found himself in front of an iron gateway. He took from the pocket of his coat a key, and after a few attempts the gate was thrust open, tearing its way through the mass of vegetation with which the iron-work and hinges were choked, and Dasso stood in the moonlight of the vegetable garden of his house. A thick belt of trees separated him from the building itself, and in the distance he heard the cries of the mob who had now gained an entrance. He clenched his fists and turned away. As he did so, through the trees a light splashed redly, then another--and another, and the man knew that they had set fire to the building.
A curse spluttered out between his teeth as, dropping the lantern into a water butt that stood at hand, he started to run along the path that led away from the house.
For perhaps a hundred yards he ran, the path leading between beds of celery and fruit bushes. The moonlight cut the garden up into sharp black-green shadows, which were illuminated now and again by flashes of light from the burning house behind him.
At the foot of the garden a high wall, spiked with broken glass, barred his way, and turning to the left he ran along at its base till he came to a door, bolted and barred. In a few moments he had this open, and was out in a small lane that ran behind the house.
Following this he emerged into a broader road, and again into the main street in which stood what was left of his home. Here, disguised as he was, he was safe, and he stood in a doorway and looked up towards the burning house.
The fire had by now obtained a firm hold, and the old worm-eaten woodwork was blazing vividly. Silhouetted against the glow were the dark figures of the incendiaries, like imps of the netherworld, leaping and howling in drunken joy, and Dasso guessed, and rightly, that some of the choice vintages it had been his whim to lay down had fallen into their unappreciative hands.