Then I recalled, with a shudder I could not repress, those sepulchral chambers beneath the church, which, owing, I believe, to the directions in an ancestor’s will, had been the means of saving it from demolition after a large portion of the churchyard bad been condemned as dangerous.  Raxton church is the only one along the coast that can boast a crypt:  all the churches are Perpendicular in style, too late for crypts; a fact which is supposed to indicate that Raxton was, in very early times, a seaside town of great importance; for the crypt is much older than the church, and of an entirely different kind of architecture.  It was once a depository for the bones of Danish warriors killed before the Norman Conquest; it extends not only beneath the chancel, as in most cases, but beneath both the transepts.  The vaulting (supported partly on low columns of remarkable beauty and partly on the basement wall of the church) is therefore of unusual extent.  The external door in the churchyard is now hidden by drifted sand and mould.  Many years ago, to give place to the tombs and coffins of my family, the bones of the old Danes were piled together in various corners; and the thought of these bones called up the picture of the abode of ‘Nin-ki-gal,’ the Queen of Death,

       Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there;
       On the gate and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.

Then my mind began to make pictures for itself of my father lying in his coffin.  I have, I think, already said that his body had been embalmed, in order to allow of its being conveyed from Switzerland to England.  Therefore I had no dread of being confronted by that attribute of Death alluded to by D’Arcy which is the most cruel and terrible of all—­corruption.  But then what change should I find in the expression of those features which on the day of the interment had looked so calm?  A thrill ran through my frame as I pictured myself raising the coffin-lid, and finding expressed upon the face, in language more appalling than any malediction in articulate speech—­the curse!

At about ten o’clock I mounted the gangway and waited behind a deserted bungalow built for Fenella Stanley till I should hear the Odd-Fellows returning.  In a few minutes I heard them approaching.  They were singing snatches of songs they had been entertained with at Graylingham, and chatting and laughing as they went down Wilderness Road towards Raxton.  As they passed the bungalow and adjoining mill there was a silence.

I heard one man say:  ‘’Ez Tom Wynne’s ghooast bin seen here o’ late?’

’Nooa, but the Squoire’s ‘ez,’ said another.