“Ah!” he said. “What makes ’ee think thart, now?” He leaned upon his spade and criticised me. “You sing at it, don’t you?” “Mebbe I do. Men sing sometimes, I’ve heard, when they’ve got the horrors on ’em.” “Have you got the horrors, then?” “Not in the sense o’ drink, though mayhap I’ve had them, too, in my time.” He lifted his cap to scratch his forehead and resumed his former position. “Look’ee here,” he said. “I stand in a grave, I do. I’ve dug two fut down. He could wake to a whisper so be as you laid him there. Did he lift his arm, his fingers ’ud claw in the air like a forked rardish. I go a fut deeper--and he’d struggle to bust himself out, and, not succeeding, there’d be a little swelling in the soil above there cracked like the top of a loaf. I go another fut, and he’s safe to lie, but he’d hear arnything louder than a bart’s whistle yet. At two yard he’ll rot as straight and dumb as a dead arder.” “What then?” I said. “What then? Why, this: Digging here, week in, week out, I thinks to myself, what if they buried me six feet deep some day before the life was out o’ me.” “Why should they?” “Why shouldn’t they? Men have been buried quick before now, and why not me?” I laughed, but looking at him, I noticed that his forehead was wet with beads of perspiration not called forth by his labor. “How long have you been digging graves?” I asked in a matter of way to help him recover his self-possession. “Six year come Martlemas.” He resumed his work for awhile and I stood watching him and pondering. Presently I said: “You buried my brother, then?” “Ay,” he answered, heaving out a big clod of earth with an effort, so strained that it seemed to twist his face into a sort of leering grin. “I was ill when my brother died,” I said, “and have lived since in London. I don’t know where he lies. Show me and I’ll give you the price of a drink.” He jumped out of the pit with alacrity and flung his coat over his shoulders, tying the dangling arms across his breast. “Thart’s easy arned,” he cried, hilariously. “Come along,” and he clumped off across the grass. “See there!” he said, suddenly, stopping me and pointed to a mangy and neglected mound that lay under a corner of the yard wall. “Is that it?” He looked at me a moment before he answered. Through all his heartiness there was a queer suggestion of craft in the fellow’s face that puzzled me. “It might be for its state,” he said, “but it isn’t. You may as soon grow beans in snow as grass on a murdered marn’s grave.” “Does a murdered man lie there?” “Ay. A matter of ten year ago, it may be. He wur found one summer morn in a ditch by the battery yon, and his skull split wi’ a billhook. Nubbody to this day knows his name or him as did it.” A grim tragedy to end in this quiet garden of death. We moved on again, not so far, and my guide pointed down. “There he lies,” he said.