The moon, by this time, was nearly above me, and so bright that a woman could have threaded her needle by its wonderful effulgence. I had not been many seconds on the table-like slab, before I heard a sound that somewhat startled me; but, after a moment’s reflection, I concluded it was the wind moaning round the old church that was at the upper end of the cemetery. Quieting myself with this belief, I pulled away at my cigar, now nearly at its last gasp, when I heard a repetition of the sound; but this time it seemed to proceed directly from underneath the slab! The affair was getting peculiar, and my nervous system was undergoing that singular process so well expressed by the phrase goose-fleshy; for if the sound did come from under the slab it could not be the wind, for it was not like anything the wind could do with such materials. But while I debated the question, the utterance struck upon my ear again, and this time it was an unmistakable groan, as if human or inhuman lips had given it expression. The goose-flesh arrangement continued to develop itself, but not to such an enormous wrinkle as to prevent my peeping over the side of the stone to see if I could catch a sight of the groan or the groaner. I feel convinced, though I did not test it, that the extraordinary phenomena so often alluded to by novelists did occur, and that my hair did stand on end, when I saw directly under me, out in the moonlight, a battered, withered leg covered by a dingy, mould-soiled piece of cloth, with a boot attached, but such a boot that no human ingenuity of St. Crispinism could repair. The boot looked like the skeleton of a boot, as the pantaloons looked like a skeleton of pantaloons. They were to all intent and purposes supernatural fractures. While I looked, the groaning was repeated, and simultaneously another leg, another piece of mould-stained cloth, another tattered boot was thrown out of the deep shadow and softly placed crosswise over the other, following the example of knight-errantry sculpture. I had stretched myself, supported by my hands, to the edge of the slab, and could see distinctly these movements and appearances; and my mind was so completely divided between the physical results and the naturally suggestive idea of the supernatural, as to leave me in a medium state of amused courage and inherent superstition.