The doctor was puffing somewhat when we finally came to a halt. I

confess that just at that minute even Sunnyside seemed a cheerful spot.

We had paused at the edge of a level cleared place, bordered all around

with primly trimmed evergreen trees. Between them I caught a glimpse

of starlight shining down on rows of white headstones and an occasional

more imposing monument, or towering shaft. In spite of myself, I drew

my breath in sharply. We were on the edge of the Casanova churchyard.

I saw now both the man who had joined the party and the implements he

carried. It was Alex, armed with two long-handled spades. After the

first shock of surprise, I flatter myself I was both cool and quiet.

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We went in single file between the rows of headstones, and although,

when I found myself last, I had an instinctive desire to keep looking

back over my shoulder, I found that, the first uneasiness past, a

cemetery at night is much the same as any other country place, filled

with vague shadows and unexpected noises. Once, indeed--but Mr.

Jamieson said it was an owl, and I tried to believe him.

In the shadow of the Armstrong granite shaft we stopped. I think the

doctor wanted to send me back.

"It's no place for a woman," I heard him protesting angrily. But the

detective said something about witnesses, and the doctor only came over

and felt my pulse.

"Anyhow, I don't believe you're any worse off here than you would be in

that nightmare of a house," he said finally, and put his coat on the

steps of the shaft for me to sit on.

There is an air of finality about a grave: one watches the earth thrown

in, with the feeling that this is the end. Whatever has gone before,

whatever is to come in eternity, that particular temple of the soul has

been given back to the elements from which it came. Thus, there is a

sense of desecration, of a reversal of the everlasting fitness of

things, in resurrecting a body from its mother clay. And yet that

night, in the Casanova churchyard, I sat quietly by, and watched Alex

and Mr. Jamieson steaming over their work, without a single qualm,

except the fear of detection.

The doctor kept a keen lookout, but no one appeared. Once in a while

he came over to me, and gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"I never expected to come to this," he said once. "There's one thing

sure--I'll not be suspected of complicity. A doctor is generally

supposed to be handier at burying folks than at digging them up."

The uncanny moment came when Alex and Jamieson tossed the spades on the

grass, and I confess I hid my face. There was a period of stress, I

think, while the heavy coffin was being raised. I felt that my

composure was going, and, for fear I would shriek, I tried to think of

something else--what time Gertrude would reach Halsey--anything but the

grisly reality that lay just beyond me on the grass.




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