The Crypts below contain the “buried magnates of ancient time and high degree,” with whom Durdles, the stonemason, was on terms of intimate familiarity— “In the demolition of impedimental fragments of wall, buttress, and pavement he has seen strange sights. . . . Thus he will say, ‘Durdles come upon the old chap, by striking right into the coffin with his pick. The old chap gave Durdles a look with his open eyes, as much as to say, Is your name Durdles? Why, my man, I’ve been waiting for you a Devil of a time!’ And then he turned to powder. With a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and a mason’s hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles goes continually sounding, and tapping all about and about the Cathedral; and whenever he says to Tope, ‘Tope, here’s another old ’un in here,’ Tope announces it to the Dean as an established discovery.” It is believed that the prototype of this character was an old German working stonemason, who lived at Rochester many years since. He employed himself by carving various grotesque figures out of odd fragments of soft stone found in the Cathedral crypt, which he begged for the purpose; and it is recollected that he was accustomed to carry these articles of _vertu_ about the town, tied up in a coloured handkerchief; also that, whenever he succeeded in effecting a sale, he immediately celebrated the transaction by getting very tipsy. He lodged at a public-house named “The Fortune of War,” now known as “_The Lifeboat_.” Chapter 12, headed “A Night with Durdles,” contains a description of the ascent of the Cathedral Tower, to the following effect:— “They go up the winding staircase . . . among the cobwebs and the dust. Twice or thrice they emerge into level low-arched galleries, whence they can look down into the moonlight nave. . . Anon they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh up here—they look down on Cloisterham, fair to see in the moonlight: its ruined habitations and sanctuaries of the dead, at the tower’s base: its moss-softened red-tiled roofs and red-brick houses of the living, clustered beyond: its river winding down from the mist on the horizon, as though that were its source, and already heaving with a restless knowledge of its approach towards the sea.” Before leaving the Cathedral precincts, on the north side we soon pass St. Nicholas Church, and may note its pleasant little graveyard—“where daisies blossom on the verdant sod”—lying near the old walls of the Castle and its contiguous gardens. It is said that this is the spot which Dickens himself would have preferred as his last resting-place.