Thrice did Harold look at the hole in the masonry and thrice did he shrink back.

“Come,” he shouted angrily, “don’t be a fool; get down here and hand me the lantern.”

George obeyed with evident trepidation.  Then Harold scrambled through the opening and with many an inward tremor, for there is scarcely a man on the earth who is really free from supernatural fears, descended hand over hand.  But in so doing he managed to let the lantern fall and it went out.  Now as any one will admit this was exceedingly trying.  It is not pleasant to be left alone in the dark and underground in the company of an unknown “spook.”  He had some matches, but what between fear and cold it was some time before he could get a light.  Down in this deep place the rush of the great gale reached his ears like a faint and melancholy sighing, and he heard other tapping noises, too, or he thought he did, noises of a creepy and unpleasant nature.  Would the matches never light?  The chill and death-like damp of the place struck to his marrow and the cold sweat poured from his brow.  Ah! at last!  He kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the lantern till he had lit it and the flame was burning brightly.  Then with an effort he turned and looked round him.

And this is what he saw.

There, three or four paces from him, in the centre of the chamber of Death sat or rather lay a figure of Death.  It reclined in a stone chest or coffin, like a man in a hip bath which is too small for him.  The bony arms hung down on either side, the bony limbs projected towards him, the great white skull hung forward over the massive breast bone.  It moved, too, of itself, and as it moved, the jaw-bone tapped against the breast and the teeth clacked gently together.

Terror seized him while he looked, and, as George had done, he turned to fly.  How could that thing move its head?  The head ought to fall off.

Seizing the rope, he jerked it violently in the first effort of mounting.

“Hev he got yew, Colonel?” sung out George above; and the sound of a human voice brought him back to his sense.

“No,” he answered as boldly as he could, and then setting his teeth, turned and tottered straight at the Horror in the chest.

He was there now, and holding the lantern against the thing, examined it.  It was a skeleton of enormous size, and the skull was fixed with rusty wire to one of the vertebrae.

At this evidence of the handiwork of man his fears almost vanished.  Even in that company he could not help remembering that it is scarcely to be supposed that spiritual skeletons carry about wire with which to tie on their skulls.