As we looked, the shed door opened. We knew it by the light which suddenly streamed upon the night. It was the light from a lantern held high, a light flickering and uncertain. It blinked and trembled and swayed as if held in a shaking hand. We knew whose was the lean, lank figure, fitfully revealed, which held it. "What can she be doing there?" we asked of each other, with chattering teeth, simultaneously. Neither answered. There was no need. Too well we knew she was letting out the men whom, to have them handy for our murder at night, she had locked in, earlier in the day. They came presently. The fluttering light gave us unsteady glimpses of them, and of some large and heavy burden they carried. "_What_ is it?" I demanded of Julia. My arm ached with her grip of it, but she did not answer. All her senses were merged in the sense of seeing. She could not hear, nor feel, nor speak. Mrs Ragg, holding the lantern high, walked ahead of the obscure group, which slowly followed. The light illumined her stooping, meagre figure as she made her way down the path across the back garden to the gate. Only now and again, by the chance swaying of the lantern, a ray lit the heavy blackness of the mass moving in her wake. She stopped with her lantern at the gate. For the minute it took for them to pass her we saw more plainly the figures of the men going heavily beneath their burden. "_What_ is it?" I found myself asking again, expecting no answer, needing none. Very softly Julia pushed up the sash of the window, hung her head with its loose flowing hair into the night. Presently, the form of Mrs Ragg came slowly back again, down the garden path. The lantern hung at her side now; its light streaming upward showed us her white and frightened face. Julia drew in her head, gently closed the window, turned to me. "They have driven off--for the present," she said. "I heard the wheels. Before they return--perhaps--we shall have time to escape." We had risen to our feet now, but we clung together still. "Julia, what _was_ it?" I asked, for the third time, quite senselessly. For my eyes are as good as Julia's, and our opportunities of sight and judgment had been the same. "It was a coffin," Julia said, and I knew that through the darkness her eyes glared with hardly maintained courage upon my face, and that she shut down her lips firmly over chattering teeth.