These were but the thoughts of a second, but the voices were nearer, and I heard a dull thud far up the
passage, and knew that a man had jumped down from the churchyard into the hole. So I took a last
stare round, agonizing to see if there was any way of escape; but the stone walls and roof were solid
enough to crush me, and the stack of casks too closely packed to hide more than a rat. There was
a man speaking now from the bottom of the hole to others in the churchyard, and then my eyes were
led as by a loadstone to a great wooden coffin that lay by itself on the top shelf, a full six feet from the
ground. When I saw the coffin I knew that I was respited, for, as I judged, there was space between it
and the wall behind enough to contain my little carcass; and in a second I had put out the candle, scrambled
up the shelves, half-stunned my senses with dashing my head against the roof, and squeezed my body
betwixt wall and coffin. There I lay on one side with a thin and rotten plank between the dead man and
me, dazed with the blow to my head, and breathing hard; while the glow of torches as they came down
the passage reddened and flickered on the roof above.