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.
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