They accordingly muffled themselves in their warmest, and plunged forth through a back door into Ned and Elsie’s playground, as the grim Doctor was wont to call it. The snow, except in one spot close at hand, lay deep, like cold oblivion, over the surging graves, and piled itself in drifted heaps against every stone that raised itself above the level; it filled enviously the letters of the inscriptions, enveloping all the dead in one great 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.”