He carried a curious long parcel under his arm, and the girl wondered what manner of gift this might be. Then, within twenty yards of her hiding-place, Nicholas Merle, having consulted a big watch, proceeded to a curious occupation that first puzzled the watcher, then froze her young limbs with an awful chill not born of cold. First, tethering his horse on the high ground above the wood, the man lighted a lantern, set his pistols at his elbow on a stone, and turned to the long parcel he had brought with him. From this he unwound some rope and produced a spade and a short, heavy pick. He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and sought a place for digging. Presently a hollow between two great slabs of granite met his view, and carefully thrusting away the briars, ferns and honeysuckle that draped this spot, he set to work and began deepening it with his tools. A mound quickly grew at hand, and a long, narrow hole began to yawn between the shelves of stone. He toiled with all his might and feared not to sing at his labour. Then, as he lifted his voice, the words he uttered told his deed to the girl who, above in the ancient oak, looked down through a screen of red leaves. She shook so that the dry foliage rustled all about her, but Nicholas Merle’s own melody filled his ear and he sang the historic song of another he once had watched mimicking the same business that now engaged him in earnest:— “A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet: O! a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.” Then the girl in the tree grasped the friendly limbs and cowered close and set her teeth to save herself from fainting and falling, for she knew that she watched the digging of her own grave. She struggled with herself to think what she should do; but to solve that problem was easy enough. Her life depended upon the sheltering tree. The pistol that glittered at Merle’s elbow was waiting for her young heart. Half an hour before their appointed time of meeting Merle finished his labours, hid his tools, trailed the weeds over his work and then, putting on his coat, blew out the lantern and sat down to wait his cousin’s arrival. And presently, while Minnie watched and wondered how long his patience would keep him in Wistman’s Wood, and how long her strength would bear the ordeal of this terror under nightly cold, she saw another shape, and a tall man’s form suddenly heaved up out of the darkness. He approached the other, and spoke. Then the girl felt her fears almost at an end, for it was Elias Bassett. He had indeed turned his face homeward, but could not find it in his heart to obey Minnie. “Late work and strange work, neighbour,” said the keeper. “I’ve bided hidden an’ watched you this hour, an’ yet I be so much in the dark as when I comed. Who are you, and what do you here?” “I mind my business, and do you the like, if you are a wise man!”