At the sight a strange wave of memory swept over me.

I could not but remember the chain which hung over the glass-covered tomb in the Crypt, and I had an instinctive feeling that the grim chasm in the floor of the sanctuary was but the other side of the opening in the roof of the crypt from which the chain over the sarcophagus depended.
There was a creaking sound--the groaning of a windlass and the clanking of a chain.

There was heavy breathing close to me somewhere.

I was so intent on what was going on that I did not see that one by one, seeming to grow out of the surrounding darkness, several black figures in monkish garb appeared with the silence of ghosts.

Their faces were shrouded in black cowls, wherein were holes through which I could see dark gleaming eyes.