The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 206: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE HEAD CONSTABLE 189 key, but, as she had anticipated, it was too rusty to turn in the lock. She oiled it, and another essay proved success- ful, the door opened, and she crossed the threshold. When inside she closed the door, and then, by the aid of the lucifer matches with which she was provided, relighted her lamp. She found herself at the entrance of a narrow stone passage, which led forward into utter darkness, and where the chill struck like myriads of ice-shafts penetrating through her brain and to her very heart’s core. She shuddered, her teeth chattered, and she was seized with a racking pain in the head through the intensity of the cold; it seemed as if ice had been suddenly applied to her temples. But the air was pure, or at least free from mephitie vapours, and thus it was: evident that the premises which she was entering had apertures for the currents of the atmosphere to pass through. She proceeded along the narrow stone passage, advancing cautiously lest any of the masonry should have fallen in, and thus create a stumbling-block in her way. But such was not the case. The mass oi stonework forming the walls on either side and the arching ceiling was as solid and com- pact as if this corridor had been hollowed out of a granite rock itself, for the old castle appeared not to belong to time but unto eternity. ‘The passage was about twenty yards in length, and it terminated with a spiral ascent of steps, all of the hardest stone. Up these did Lady Saxondale mount, and in a few minutes she entered a long, narrow apartment, or, rather, an enclosure of solid masonry, in which were the stone mausolea enclosing the coffins of those long-dead ancestors of the Saxondale family whose monuments were in the cloister above. For this vault —if such it could be termed, which was not underground — was precisely be- neath the cloister itself, and exactly corresponding with it in dimensions. Several loopholes on the western side, namely, the one overlooking the river, admitted the currents of fresh air. Awful was the silence and deadly the chill which prevailed in this place,— a silence fitted for the place of tombs, a chill such as that which sweeps from the sounding sea-lashed shores of Labrador. Lady Saxondale shuddered again, but it was more with the cold than with fear, for this woman of the most powerful mind feared her crimes far more on account of what the living might do to her as the CONNIE DOOKS (C(O)