to be. He said to himself that on the next day
at dawn he would slip out of the barn and try whether
he could not find some hiding-place within easy reach
of the cottage, so as to be able to watch her dwelling
at his ease throughout the day. The plan seemed
a good one. Since he was obliged to wait twenty-four
hours in order to get the money he wanted, he might
as well employ the time profitably in observing his
wife’s habits. It would be long, he said
to himself with a bitter sneer, before he troubled
her again—he would just like to see.
Having come to this decision he drew some of the hay
over his body and in spite of cold and wet was soon
peacefully asleep. But at early dawn he awoke
with the alacrity of a man who constantly expects pursuit,
and slipped down from the hayloft into the barn.
There was no one stirring and he got over the fence
at the back of the yard and skirted the fields in
the direction of the church, finally climbing another
stile and entering what he supposed to be the park.
On this side the back of the church ran out into a
broad meadow, where the larger portion of the ancient
abbey had once stood. Goddard walked along close
by the church walls. He knew from his observation
on the previous afternoon that he could thus come
out into the road in the vicinity of the cottage, unless
his way through the park were interrupted by impassable
wire fences. The ground was very heavy and he
was sure not to meet anybody in the meadows in such
weather.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at a buttress that
jutted out from the church and for the existence of
which there seemed to be no ostensible reason.
He examined it and found that it was not a buttress
but apparently a half ruined chamber, which at some
former period had been built upon the side of the
abbey. Low down by the ground there was a hole,
where a few stones seemed to have been removed and
not replaced. Goddard knelt down in the long
wet grass and put in his head; then he crept in on
his hands and knees and presently disappeared.
He found himself in a room about ten feet square,
dimly lighted by a small window at the top, and surrounded
by long horizontal niches. The floor, which was
badly broken in some places, was of stone. Goddard
examined the place carefully. It was evidently
an old vault of the kind formerly built above ground
for the lords of the manor; but the coffins, if there
had ever been any, had been removed elsewhere.
Goddard laughed to himself.
“I might stay here for a year, if I could get
anything to eat,” he said to himself.
CHAPTER XIV.
Copyrights
A Tale of a Lonely Parish from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
