yward. I have not forgot that, lad, for 'twas
Cracky Jones lay there, with his face thin and shrunk, yet all the doited
look gone out of it. We tried to force some brandy in his mouth, but he
was stark and dead; with knees drawn up towards his head, so stiff we had
to lift him doubled as he was, and lay him by the churchyard wall for
some of us to find next day. We never knew how he got there, but guessed
that he had hung about the landers some night when they ran a cargo, and
slipped in when the watchman's back was turned. Thus when Sam Tewkesbury
spoke of screams and waitings, and no one to be seen, I knew what 'twas,
but never guessed who might be shut in there, not knowing thou wert gone
amissing. So ran to Ratsey to get his help to slip the side stone off,
for by myself I cannot stir it now, though once I did when I was younger;
and from him learned that thou wert lost, and knew whom we should find
before we got there.'

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