would tell you no; but put them to choose at night between these eerie Precincts and the thoroughfare of shops, and you would find that ninety-nine declared for the longer round and the more frequented way.  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.  Up and down these lanes they walk, Durdles discoursing of the ‘old uns’ he yet counts on disinterring, and slapping a wall, in which he considers ’a whole family on ’em’ to be stoned and earthed up, just as if he were a familiar friend of the family.  The taciturnity of Durdles is for the time overcome by Mr. Jasper’s wicker bottle, which circulates freely;—­in the sense, that is to say, that its contents enter freely into Mr. Durdles’s circulation, while Mr. Jasper only rinses his mouth once, and casts forth the rinsing.

They are to ascend the great Tower.  On the steps by which they rise to the Cathedral, Durdles pauses for new store of breath.  The steps are very dark, but out of the darkness they can see the lanes of light they have traversed.  Durdles seats himself upon a step.  Mr. Jasper seats himself upon another.  The odour from the wicker bottle (which has somehow passed into Durdles’s keeping) soon intimates that the cork has been taken out; but this is not ascertainable through the sense of sight, since neither can descry the other.  And yet, in talking, they turn to one another, as though their faces could commune together.

‘This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!’

‘It is very good stuff, I hope.—­I bought it on purpose.’