The first time I had entered among the ruins was by myself. I climbed the slope early on the morning before breakfast, and stood in the midst of them, thrilled and awestricken. A little grassy valley divided me from the hill which concealed the village, of which not so much as a roof was visible from where I stood. I seemed entirely cut off and alone, a pigmy in the stupendous shadows of these “ruined choirs.” The ground swept in a steepish curve to the cliff edge, and again, inland, in one slightly shallower. These were the “Old and New Testaments” of the Mitre; and in the “Valley of Knowledge” that lay between, was built the abbey, its monastery, chapter-house, refectory and other buildings taking and topping the western slope, which, on its further side, went shelving down to the _Cemeterium Fratrum_, and the confines of the old grounds. I poked about among the shattered stones with a feeling between fear and curiosity. I could tell by the fresh edges of the rents, and the way in which little avalanches of mortar were constantly falling with a whispering sound, that much of the devastation was recent. The tower had been breached by the earthquake all down its seaward front, opening a monstrous gap from which a cataract of stones had thundered, and piled themselves in foam, as it were, at the foot. In one place, near the cliff slope, a mighty plinth had been heaved on to its side, and I saw the mould on the under surface of it yet grooved with the tracks of slugs and beetles. It had sunk, with the mass of masonry cemented to it, two-thirds of its breadth into the earth, and all about the ground was strangely wryed, and distorted, and cracked, and bubbled up into mounds, as if here the underheaval had made itself peculiarly felt. I was gazing on it half-fascinated, when, happening to raise my eyes, I started to see other regarding me fixedly from a face which seemed to have sprouted from the earth. I gave a little cry and uttered Mr. Rampick’s name. At the word, the man himself rose to his height, from the position in which it appeared he had been crouching, and ascended the last steps of a cliff pathway, of the existence of which I had not known. He came up to me, rubbing the back of his bony hand across his mouth. “Come to see _fur_ yourself, sir?” he said, in his breathless, fawning way. “Yes,” I answered. “It was here, wasn’t it?” He stamped with his great foot. “Here, or hereabouts,” he said, “they lays under--_as_ supposed--each with his brace o’ runlets.” It was a fearful but thrilling thought. “Why don’t they dig for them?” I whispered. He gazed at me a moment, breathing hard. His eyes seemed blacker, the rims round them more livid than I had yet noticed.