Lieutenant Gustavus Drane awoke from his stupor to find himself chained to the floor. It was dark, so dark. Where was he and what was that sound? How did I get here? He struggled to regain his thoughts. He had been drinking, rather heavily, with the other men of the regiment. He ought to have known better, that they had never really liked him, but the days and weeks at Castle Island in Boston Harbor were long and cold with little else to do but play cards and drink. He was better than this, he thought! Gustavus Drane cursed his bad luck, but as his eyes began to focus again and as the thoughts began to come together in his clouded mind, he assessed his situation. He was in a dark place, but where? Was this a casemate, an underground storage bunker? It must be. And that sound - men talking and the sound of bricks being moved. He struggled but the iron handcuffs were cumbersome and his feet were shackled, as well. Those men, he could see shadows flickering the dimmest of light at the end of the casemate - they were - no, good God, please God no - they were sealing him inside, one granite brick at a time. He raved, he swore, he shouted, but all to no avail. The sound echoed and rattled around the empty chamber, this vast tomb, but no sound could escape. He pleaded with the men he had played cards with only hours ago, men he had shared whiskey and wine with, men who knew him well. Why were they doing this to him? Was it because of Massie? It must be. Massie, that fool that he ran through with his sword because of his insolence, because of his damned familiarity with the others. Surely these men walling him in alive understood the rules of the duel? Massie had willingly walked to his death that Christmas morning a year ago. By showing up, he had tacitly agreed to the rules and one of the rules was that the winner walked away free. Was it his fault he was the better swordsman? Did these men not understand? And then, the sounds grew still and the light grew dim and Lieutenant Drane stopped his protestations for a moment to take in the gravity of the situation. It was a long moment, followed by the clink of stone upon stone and then, utter darkness. He screamed and then, with no hope left, he began to weep. He was never seen or heard from again. Anyone who has read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is familiar with this tale. Well, sort of. The details are different, though the basic plot is the same. A man is tempted and plied with drink, a man who is despised by the one who offers the spirits. He is teased with more good company and more liquor until, at last, he is senseless and easily chained. Then, his captors begin to seal him into the space they have prepared for him. In the end, the poor victim recovers just long enough to see the last light he will ever see in this world as the last brick is inserted into the wall. In Poe’s classic tale, he ends the story with the words Stories can take their inspiration from legends and legends need not be ancient or ever very old. They can rise from the tales told among a small group of people, stories that resonate and have a moral or a lesson. So it is with Poe’s classic story. In this case, it is a tale told by soldiers to pass the time and while away the long hours of boredom that is the bulk of a soldier's time. People who are familiar with Poe and his macabre works may not know that Poe was born in Boston in 1809, the son of an alcoholic father and his mother, a locally acclaimed actress, Elizabeth. Poe’s father disappeared early and his mother died when he was two years old of tuberculosis. Moved from foster family to foster family, he eventually found himself adopted by a Richmond couple, to a mother who loved him dearly and doted upon him, and to a father who, over the years, grew to detest young Edgar and his gentile ways. Poe was sent to the University of Virginia in its early days with only enough money from his father to pay tui