The stream was soon forded. Emerging on the farther side they scrambled up the other bank into a thicker darkness, where Sedgwick, colliding with a gnarled tree trunk, stood lost and waiting. A tiny bar of light appeared. It swept across huddled and half-obliterated mounds, marked only by the carpet of myrtle—that faithful plant whose mission it is to garland the graves of the forsaken and the forgotten—shone whitely back from the headstone of the old slave-trader, came to a rest upon a fresh garish ridge of earth, all pasty and yellow in the rain, and abruptly died. “Too dangerous to use the lantern,” murmured Kent. “Take the near end and dig.” Delving, even in the most favorable circumstances, is a fairly stern test of wind and muscle. In the pitch blackness, under such nerve-thrilling conditions, it was an ordeal. Both men, fortunately, were in hard training. The heavy soil flew steadily and fast. Soon they were waist deep. Kent, in a low voice, bade his fellow toiler stop. “Mustn’t wear ourselves out at the start,” he said. “Take five minutes’ rest.” At the end of three minutes, Sedgwick was groping for his spade. “I’ve got to go on, Chet,” he gasped. “The silence and idleness are too much for me.” “It’s just as well,” assented his commander. “The clouds are breaking, worse luck. And some one might possibly be up and about, in the house. Go to it!” This time there was no respite until, with a thud which ran up his arm to his heart, Kent’s iron struck upon wood. Both men stood, frozen into attitudes of attention. No sound came from the house. “Easy now,” warned Kent, after he judged it safe to continue. “I thought that Jim dug deeper than that. Spade it out gently. And feel for the handles.” “I’ve got one,” whispered Sedgwick. “Climb out, then, and pass me down the rope.” As Sedgwick gained the earth’s level, the moon, sailing from behind a cloud, poured a flood of radiance between the tree trunks. Kent’s face, as he raised it from the grave, stretching out his hand for the cord, was ghastly, but his lips smiled encouragement. “All right! One minute, now, and we’re safe.” “Safe!” repeated the other. “With that opened grave! I shall never feel safe again.” From between the earthen walls Kent’s voice came, muffled. “Safe as a church,” he averred, “from the minute that we have the coffin. Take this end of the rope. Got it? Now this one. It’s fast, fore and aft. Here I come.” With a leap he clambered out of the excavation. He took one end of the rope from Sedgwick’s hand. “All ready to haul?” he inquired in matter-of-fact tones. “Wait. What are we going to do with this—this _thing_?” demanded his co-laborer. “We can never get it to the car.” A low chuckle sounded from the shrubbery back of them. The resurrectionists stood, stricken. “An owl,” whispered Sedgwick at length. “No,” replied Kent in the same tone. Then, in full voice, and with vivid urgency, “_Haul_!”