"Not even the price of half a litre of wine," said the mason in answer
to the mute question.

"Church stuff," observed the carpenter discontentedly.

The porter nodded gravely, and the men nodded to him as they went out
into the street. They had nothing more to do that day, and they turned
into the dark little wine shop, where the withered bush stuck out of
the blackened grating. They sat down opposite each other, with the end
of the grimy board of the table between them, and the carpenter made a
sign. The host brought a litre measure of thin red wine and set it
down between them with two tumblers. He was ghastly pale, flabby and
sullen, with a quarter of an inch of stubbly black beard on his
unhealthy face.

The carpenter poured a few drops of wine into one of the tumblers,
shook it about, turned it into the other, shook it again, and finally
poured it on the unctuous stone floor beside him. Then he filled both
glasses to the brim, and both men drank in silence.

They repeated the operation, and after the second glass there was not
much left in the measure. The flabby host had retired to the gloomy
vaults within, where he played cards with a crony by the light of a
small smoking lamp with a cracked chimney.

"That was the very place, was it not?" asked the carpenter at last, in
a low tone, and almost without moving his lips.

The mason said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders, in a sort of
enigmatic assent. Both drank again, and after a long time the