I shuddered while Elzevir talked, for I thought how Cracky Jones had perhaps hidden behind the self-same coffin that sheltered me, and how narrowly I had escaped his fate.  And that old story came back into my mind, how, years ago, there once arose so terrible a cry from the vault at service-time, that parson and people fled from the church; and I doubted not now that some other poor soul had got shut in that awful place, and was then calling for help to those whose fears would not let them listen.

‘There we found thee,’ Elzevir went on, ’stretched out on the sand, senseless and far gone; and there was something in thy face that made me think of David when he lay stretched out in his last sleep.  And so I put thee on my shoulder and bare thee back, and here thou art in David’s room, and shalt find board and bed with me as long as thou hast mind to.’  We spoke much together during the days when I was getting stronger, and I grew to like Elzevir well, finding his grimness was but on the outside, and that never was a kinder man.  Indeed, I think that my being with him did him good; for he felt that there was once more someone to love him, and his heart went out to me as to his son David.  Never once did he ask me to keep my counsel as to the vault and what I had seen there, knowing, perhaps, he had no need, for I would have died rather than tell the secret to any.  Only, one day Master Ratsey, who often came to see me, said—­

’John, there is only Elzevir and I who know that you have seen the inside of our bond-cellar; and ’tis well, for if some of the landers guessed, they might have ugly ways to stop all chance of prating.  So keep our secret tight, and we’ll keep yours, for “he that refraineth his lips is wise".’

I wondered how Master Ratsey could quote Scripture so pat, and yet cheat the revenue; though, in truth, ’twas thought little sin at Moonfleet to run a cargo; and, perhaps, he guessed what I was thinking, for he added—­

’Not that a Christian man has aught to be ashamed of in landing a cask of good liquor, for we read that when Israel came out of Egypt, the chosen people were bid trick their oppressors out of jewels of silver and jewels of gold; and among those cruel taskmasters, some of the wont must certainly have been the tax-gatherers.’

* * * * *

The first walk I took when I grew stronger and was able to get about was up to Aunt Jane’s, notwithstanding she had never so much as been to ask after me all these days.  She knew, indeed, where I was, for Ratsey had told her I lay at the Why Not?, explaining that Elzevir had found me one night on the ground famished and half-dead, yet not saying where.  But my aunt greeted me with hard words, which I need not repeat here; for, perhaps, she meant them not unkindly, but only to bring me back again to the right way.  She did not let me cross the threshold, holding the door ajar in her hand, and saying she would have