Chapter 9 - Page 2

winding-sheet, whiter and colder than those which
they had individually worn. The dreary space was pathless; not a
footstep had tracked through the heavy snow; for it must be warm
affection indeed that could so melt this wintry impression as to
penetrate through the snow and frozen earth, and establish any warm
thrills with the dead beneath: daisies, grass, genial earth, these
allow of the magnetism of such sentiments; but winter sends them
shivering back to the baffled heart.

"Well, Ned," said the Doctor, impatiently.

Ned looked about him somewhat bewildered, and then pointed to a spot
within not more than ten paces of the threshold which they had just
crossed; and there appeared, not a gravestone, but a new grave (if any
grave could be called new in that often-dug soil, made up of old
mortality), an open hole, with the freshly-dug earth piled up beside
it. A little snow (for there had been a gust or two since morning)
appeared, as they peeped over the edge, to have fallen into it; but not
enough to prevent a coffin from finding fit room and accommodation in
it. But it was evident that the grave had been dug that very day.

"The headstone, with the foot on it, was just here," said Ned, in much
perplexity, "and, as far as I can judge, the old sunken grave exactly
marked out the space of this new one." [Endnote: 1.]

"It is a shame," said Elsie, much shocked at the indecorum, "that the
new person should be thrust in here; for the old one was a friend of
ours."

"But what has become of the headstone!" exclaimed the young English
stranger.

During their perplexity, a person had approached the group, wading
through the snow from the gateway giving entrance from the street; a
gaunt figure, with stooping shoulders, over one of which was a spade
and some other tool fit for delving in the earth; and in his face there
was the sort of keen, humorous twinkle that grave-diggers somehow seem
to get, as if the dolorous character of their business necessitated
something unlike itself by an inevitable reaction.

"Well, Doctor," said he, with a shrewd wink in his face, "are you
looking for one of your patients? The man who is to be put to bed here
was never caught in your spider's web."

"No," said Doctor Grimshawe; "when my patients have done with me, I
leave them to you and the old Nick, and never trouble myself about them
more. What I want to know is, why you have taken upon you to steal a
man's grave, after he has had immemorial possession of it. By what
right have you dug up this bed, undoing the work of a predecessor of
yours, who has long since slept in one of his own furrows?"