“I am quite willing to make the trial.”
“But I am much too lazy to attempt collecting all the scattered thoughts of the last ten minutes.”
“The very last I can guess, perhaps,” said Hamilton; “your eyes were fixed on that placard, and you thought——”
“Well, what?”
“Where are now the future occupiers of that tomb? Am I not right?”
“Quite right. Wherever they are, and whoever they may be, they certainly have no wish to enter here. The buyers of tombs are seldom disposed to enter into actual possession. But where is this Maximus chapel? You said it was in the mountain, and I see nothing in the least like an entrance, although there are three windows and a wall up there.”
“The windows were formerly mere holes made in the rock, and ought never to have been glazed. Through the largest of them fifty monks, who had taken refuge with Maximus, were thrown headlong down the mountain by the barbarians who took possession of Salzburg in the fifth century.”
“And Maximus?”
“He was hung.”
“That was a pity—I dare say he would have preferred being thrown over the precipice.”