These were but the thoughts of a second, but the voices were nearer, and I heard a dull thud far up the passage, and knew that a man had jumped down from the churchyard into the hole.  So I took a last stare round, agonizing to see if there was any way of escape; but the stone walls and roof were solid enough to crush me, and the stack of casks too closely packed to hide more than a rat.  There was a man speaking now from the bottom of the hole to others in the churchyard, and then my eyes were led as by a loadstone to a great wooden coffin that lay by itself on the top shelf, a full six feet from the ground.  When I saw the coffin I knew that I was respited, for, as I judged, there was space between it and the wall behind enough to contain my little carcass; and in a second I had put out the candle, scrambled up the shelves, half-stunned my senses with dashing my head against the roof, and squeezed my body betwixt wall and coffin.  There I lay on one side with a thin and rotten plank between the dead man and me, dazed with the blow to my head, and breathing hard; while the glow of torches as they came down the passage reddened and flickered on the roof above.

CHAPTER 4

IN THE VAULT

Let us hob and nob with Death—­Tennyson

Though nothing of the vault except the roof was visible from where I lay, and so I could not see these visitors, yet I heard every word spoken, and soon made out one voice as being Master Ratsey’s.  This discovery gave me no surprise but much solace, for I thought that if the worst happened and I was discovered, I should find one friend with whom I could plead for life.

‘It is well the earth gave way’, the sexton was saying, ’on a night when we were here to find it.  I was in the graveyard myself after midday, and all was snug and tight then.  ’Twould have been awkward enough to have the hole stand open through the day, for any passer-by to light on.’

There were four or five men in the vault already, and I could hear more coming down the passage, and guessed from their heavy footsteps that they were carrying burdens.  There was a sound, too, of dumping kegs down on the ground, with a swish of liquor inside them, and then the noise of casks being moved.

‘I thought we should have a fall there ere long,’ Ratsey went on, ’what with this drought parching the ground, and the trampling at the edge when we move out the side stone to get in, but there is no mischief done beyond what can be easily made good.  A gravestone or two and a few spades of earth will make all sound again.  Leave that to me.’

‘Be careful what you do,’ rejoined another man’s voice that I did not know, ‘lest someone see you digging, and scent us out.’

‘Make your mind easy,’ Ratsey said; ’I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.’