Rampole nodded. The whole side was covered with ivy, bulging in places where the weight of the masonry had made it sink into the crest of the hill. In the skimmed-milk light he could see tendrils hanging from the heavy bars in the window. Immediately beneath the balcony, but very far down, was another iron door. In front of this door, the limestone hill tumbled down sheer into the pointed fir trees of the Hag's Nook.
"And the door below," he said, "is where they took the condemned out, I suppose?"
"Yes. You can still see the three blocks of stone, with the holes in them, that held the framework of the gallows… The stone coping of the well is hidden in those trees. They weren't there, of course, when the well was in use."
"All the dead were dumped into it?"
"Oh yes. You wonder the whole countryside isn't polluted, even after a hundred years. As it is, the well is a rare place for bugs and vermin. Dr. Markley had been agitating about it for the last fifteen years; but he can't get the borough or council to do anything about it, because it's Starberth land. Hmf."
"And they won't let it be filled in?"
"No. That's a part of the old mumbo-jumbo, too; a relic of the eighteenth-century Anthony. I've been going over Anthony's journal again. And when — I think of the way he died, and certain puzzling references in the journal, I sometimes think…"
"You haven't yet told me how he died," Rampole said, quietly.
As he said it he wondered whether he wanted to know. Last night he thought, he was certain, that something wet had been looking down from the prison wall. In daytime he had not noticed it, but now he was aware of a distinct marshy smell, which seemed to be blowing across the meadow from the Hag's Nook.
"I forgot," muttered the old lexicographer. "I was going to read it to you this afternoon when Mrs. F. interrupted us. Here." There was a rustle of paper, and a thick bundle of sheets was put into his hand. "Take it upstairs later; I want you to read it and form your own opinions."