Ask the first hundred
citizens of Cloisterham, met at random in the streets at noon, if
they believed in Ghosts, they 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.
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