"Graciously forbid it, Heaven!" she inwardly ejaculated, approaching the grave; but so softly, that her footsteps were not heard by the invisible workman, who was deep in the abyss of his own creating. The blows had ceased, and the mattock was now in requisition. Shovelfuls of earth were thrown out; thick and heavy clods were hurled forth in rapid succession. The scene would have driven back many a timid girl; and even some stout hearts and fierce stomachs would have shrunk from the trial. She was within range, and almost within the grasp, of a being whose evil dispositions were known and acknowledged--a being whose mysterious connection with intelligences of an unfriendly nature was universally admitted. A grave, dug in secret, peradventure during some baneful and preternatural process, yawned before her. Midnight, too, was nigh; and she was not devoid of apprehension--that inherent dread of the invisible things of darkness universally bound up with our feeble and fallen nature. Since the day of his first estrangement, man never, even in imagination or apprehension, approaches the dark and shadowy threshold of a world unseen without terror, lest some supernatural communication should break forth; it seems a feeling coeval with the curse on our first parents, when they heard "the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden, and were afraid." This apprehension still clings to us; but, though surrounded in light, as well as in darkness, by a world of disembodied spirits, whose attributes and capacities are inconceivably superior to our own, our nature is so material, and our very essence so engrossed and identified with earth, that it is only when the startling realities of their existence become manifest in those visible emblems of their nature--darkness and death--that we shrink back in horror, lest our very being should suffer contact with spiritual and eternal things. Concealed from view, Marian stood still at a very short distance from the grave. Steenie was humming a plaintive ditty, or rather dirge; for it partook of a double character, something between an alehouse roundelay and a funeral chant. She soon perceived that each spadeful, as it was thrown out, was accompanied by a separate distich, the meaning of which she could distinctly gather from some uncouth and barbarous rhymes--the remnants, probably, of a more superstitious age--almost cabalistic in their form and acceptation. The following may serve as a specimen, though we have taken the precaution to render them a little more intelligible:-- "Howk, hack, and dig spade; Tenant ne'er grumbled that grave was ill made." Then came a heavy spadeful of earth again from the narrow house. Another shovelful produced the following doggerel:-- "Housen, and castles, and kings decay; But the biggins we big last till doomus-day."