Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the rather long and pale face. ‘Not, I suppose,’ he resumed faintly—‘not, I suppose, beyond what’s there.’ His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. ‘Well, you know, there’s a good deal there’—he stooped over—‘if you read between the lines. Even if you don’t.’ ‘A suicide,’ said Lawford, under his breath. ‘Yes, a suicide; that’s why our Christian countrymen have buried him outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.’ ‘Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?’ said Lawford. ‘Haven’t you noticed,’ drawled the other, ‘how green the grass grows down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier’s thorns? Besides, he was a stranger, and they—kept him out.’ ‘But, surely,’ said Lawford, ‘was it so entirely a matter of choice—the laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.’ The stranger turned with a little shrug. ‘I don’t suppose it’s a matter of much consequence to _him_. I fancied I was his only friend. May I venture to ask why you are interested in the poor old thing?’ Lawford’s mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. ‘Oh, a rather unusual thing happened to me here,’ he said. ‘You say you often come?’ ‘Often,’ said the stranger rather curtly. ‘Has anything—ever—occurred?’ ‘“Occurred?”’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I wish it had. I come here simply, as I have said, because it’s quiet; because I prefer the company of those who never answer me back, and who do not so much as condescend to pay me the least attention.’ He smiled and turned his face towards the quiet fields. Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. ‘Do you think,’ he said softly, ‘it is possible one ever could?’ ‘“One ever could?”’ ‘Answer back?’ There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier’s grave; on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather curiously at his companion. ‘Seldom the time and the place and the _revenant_ altogether. The thought has occurred to others,’ he ventured to add. ‘Of course, of course,’ said Lawford eagerly. ‘But it is an absolutely new one to me. I don’t mean that I have never had such an idea, just in one’s own superficial way; but’—he paused and glanced swiftly into the fast-thickening twilight—‘I wonder: are they, do you think, really, all quite dead?’ ‘Call and see!’ taunted the stranger softly. ‘Ah, yes, I know,’ said Lawford. ‘But I believe in the resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies—supposing it was most frightfully against one’s will; that one hated the awful inaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in a dark cupboard; one might surely one might—just quietly, you know, try to get out? wouldn’t you?’ he added. ‘And, surely,’ he found himself beginning gently to argue again, ‘surely, what about, say, him?’ He nodded towards the old and broken grave that lay between them.