The cause of this is not
to be found in any local superstition that attaches to the
Precincts--albeit a mysterious lady, with a child in her arms and a
rope dangling from her neck, has been seen flitting about there by
sundry witnesses as intangible as herself--but it is to be sought
in the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in it from
dust out of which the breath of life has passed; also, in the
widely diffused, and almost as widely unacknowledged, reflection:
'If the dead do, under any circumstances, become visible to the
living, these are such likely surroundings for the purpose that I,
the living, will get out of them as soon as I can.' Hence, when
Mr. Jasper and Durdles pause to glance around them, before
descending into the crypt by a small side door, of which the latter
has a key, the whole expanse of moonlight in their view is utterly
deserted. One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr.
Jasper's own gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond;
but no wave passes the archway, over which his lamp burns red
behind his curtain, as if the building were a Lighthouse.
They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and
are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the
moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the
broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy
pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but
between them there are lanes of light.
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