The place is much lower, and worse
lighted, than the contemporary crypt of St. Peter's-in-the-East, but
not, perhaps, less interesting. The square-headed capitals have not
been touched, like some of those in St. Peter's, by a later chisel.
The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise much as Robert D'Oily
left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor.
It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work very well, and gives
satisfaction to the persons who have to employ it. Sinister the
Norman castle was in its beginning, "it was from the castle that men
did wrong to the poor around them; it was from the castle that they
bade defiance to the king, who, stranger and tyrant as he might be,
was still a protector against smaller tyrants." Sinister the castle
remains; you enter it through ironed and bolted doors, you note the
prisoners at their dreary exercises, and, when you have seen the
engines of the law lying in the old crypt you pass out into the place
of execution. Here, in a corner made by Robert's tower and by the
wall of the prison, is a dank little quadrangle. The ground is of
the yellow clay and gravel which floors most Oxford quadrangles. A
few letters are scratched on the soft stone of the wall--the letters
"H. R." are the freshest. These are the initials of the last man who
suffered death in this corner--a young rustic who had murdered his
sweetheart. "H. R.
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