'I beg your pardon, Winifred,' I said, falling upon her and pushing
her back.
Then I stood paralysed as the full sinister meaning of the situation
broke in upon my mind. Had the _debris_ fallen in any other way I
might have saved Winifred from seeing the most cruel feature of the
hideous spectacle, the cross, the evidence of her father's sacrilege.
I might, perhaps, on some pretence, have left her on this side the
_debris_, and turning the corner, have mounted the heap and removed
the cross gleaming in hideous mockery on the dead man's breast, and
giving back the moonbeams in a cross of angry fire. One glance,
however, had shown me that before this could be done, there was a
wall of slippery sward to climb, for the largest portion of the
churchyard soil had broken off in one lump. In falling, it had turned
but _half_ over, and then had slid down sideways, presenting to the
climber a facet or sward nearly perpendicular and a dozen feet high.
Wedged in between the jaggy top of this block and the wall of the
cliff was the corpse, showing that Wynne had been standing by the
fissure of the cliff at the moment when it widened into a landslip.
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