Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/58

Rh doors from the first, having a simple fastening, and no opening through them.

Just beyond, on the left side, I passed a staircase leading up, and then three doors, much resembling those first described, standing opposite three more, on the other side of the cellar. Having passed these I found the cellar again enlarged as before, and here the earth appeared as if mixed with some whitish substance, which attracted my attention.

As I proceeded, I found the whiteness increase, until the surface looked almost like snow, and I observed before me a hole dug go deep into the earth that I could perceive no bottom. I stopped to observe it — it was circular, twelve or fifteen feet across, in the middle of the cellar, and unprotected by any curb, so that one might easily have walked into it in the dark.

The white substance was spread all over the surface around it; and lay in such quantities on all sides, that it seemed as if a great deal must have been thrown into the hole. It occurred to me that the white substance was lime, and that this was the place where the infants were buried, after being murdered, as the Superior had informed me. I knew that lime is often used by Roman Catholics in burying places; and this accounted for its being about the spot in such quantities.

This was a shocking thought to me; but I can hardly tell how it affected me, as I had been prepared to expect dreadful things, and undergone trials which prevented me from feeling as I should formerly have done in similar circumstances.

I passed the pit, therefore, with dreadful thoughts about the little corpses which might be in that secret burying place, but with recollections also of the declarations about the favour done their souls in sending them direct to heaven, and the necessary virtue accompanying all the actions of the priests.

There is a window or two on each side nearly against the hole, in at which are sometimes thrown articles