"Like enough, perhaps."

"More than enough, I think," muttered Joey Ladle, shaking his head
solemnly.

"Well, say it is like; say it is exactly like. What then?"

"Master George, they do say--"

"Who?"

"How should I know who?" rejoined the Cellarman, apparently much
exasperated by the unreasonable nature of the question. "Them! Them as
says pretty well everything, you know. How should I know who They are,
if you don't?"

"True. Go on."

"They do say that the man that gets by any accident a piece of that dark
growth right upon his breast, will, for sure and certain, die by murder."

As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman's eyes, which he had
fastened on his light while dreamily saying those words, he suddenly
became conscious of being struck upon his own breast by a heavy hand.
Instantly following with his eyes the action of the hand that struck
him--which was his companion's--he saw that it had beaten off his breast
a web or clot of the fungus even then floating to the ground.

For a moment he turned upon the Cellarman almost as scared a look as the
Cellarman turned upon him. But in another moment they had reached the