Old Specie, the Treasury Detective; or, The Harbor Lights of New York — page 135: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

OLD SPROCTE. 127 He had nothing to do with the latter now, but the former held his attention. What lay beyond? - The door seemed heavy. It was on the side toward the brewery, and per- haps led to some passages once used in the under- ground work of the place, for all breweries have deep cellars, where they keep their product cool. Sometimes these cellars are galleries extending into a hillside, and again they extend several stories in depth into the earth. Old Specie made for the door. Then he dropped his match and stepped on it. Again darkness. It was his best friend just now. The door did not seem to be fastened, though there was a heavy rusty bolt on the side he found himself first, as though at some time in the past the householder had deemed it expedient to close the door against intrusion. Pushing the door open, Old Specie passed on. He believed he was in a passage, because by ex- tending his hands he could touch both walls. They were damp. The ground in this region is always damp, because at high tide the water of the river is above the level of a cellar floor. Moving on he made a turn. Ah! light ahead! It came like a revelation. There were only sundry streaks or lances of the light, and he could understand that this percolated, as it were, through cracks in some barrier that lay beyond. Still such was the awful darkness through which Gomicboo <