cool steadfastness. I was fidgetty and anxious. Balfour’s alarm in the room had filled me with uneasiness, and, though he seemed recovered, he was still nervous and depressed. However, it was no time for retrospection; and, creeping along the side of the low wall to the deeper shadow of the church, we leaped the enclosure.
The moment I was in the ground all uncertainty passed from my mind, to be immediately succeeded by a deep sense of duty, and a firm purpose to execute it. I at once advanced to the spot marked in a visit of investigation the day before as the site of the recent grave. After having made the needful preliminary examination, and satisfied ourselves that we were correct, I let Balfour take the commencement of the work, while I removed a short distance from the grave to watch, and warn my comrade should anything occur to disturb us. It is far better to work than to watch on these occasions. The attention is absorbed in the exertion, and on that account I determined that Balfour should begin. As I stood in the drear yard, I looked about me more narrowly, to accustom my eye to the dim obscurity and to the various dark mis-shapen objects around. One decaying monument appeared like a crouching monster watching us, and it was not till I had approached to examine the object more closely that I could perfectly satisfy myself of its real nature. The evergreen trees and bushes that clustered in the opposite corner of the yard were darkly outlined against the dusky reddish light arising from the city, three miles off. As I stood listening on the watch, the ticking of the church-clock seemed to grow gradually louder in the intense silence. Presently I heard another sound, not unlike it, a soft tapping noise that I could not understand. It appeared, at times, to be very near me, and then to die away in the distance. The grating of the spade in the stony soil, which had been going on for some time, now ceased. I therefore returned to Balfour, to see what he was about, and to take my spell at the work, surrendering to him the watch. As I approached he spoke softly from the grave, in a nervous and excited way.
“Hush! do you hear nothing? do you see nothing?”
My own attention had been drawn to the peculiar sounds before mentioned—soft intermitting sounds, like little footsteps patting on the ground. Balfour came stumbling up to me.
“It is horribly dark; what are these noises, so like heavy droppings of blood? Are they the echoes of the church-clock, or are there two ticking clocks to the tower? I hate this infernal thing! What is it? Why did you bring me here to be thus tormented?” And he wiped the perspiration from his brow with his muddy hand.
“Pooh, pooh! it is nothing at all, Balfour,” said I; “get back to the work again. I will go to the other side of the yard and see about it.”
I crossed the ground in the direction of the sounds, ankle deep in the rank wet grass that ever fattens on the rich loam of the churchyard, slipping over graves and low head-stones, to the imminent danger of my shins. When I drew near, I perceived the simple cause of our alarm: though the storm had ceased, large drops continued to fall from a spout at the top of the tower, and pattered on the flags below.
As I turned to go back, I jostled a dark figure standing close to me. In my first impulse I seized it by the throat, but was roughly shaken off by the more powerful Balfour. “Why the devil,” I angrily exclaimed, “do you thus dog me, sir; how infernally you have startled me—do get back to your work!” We returned sulkily and in silence. I took up the shovel and began to dig. Balfour presently touched me on the shoulder. “Wilder,” he said, “you were very angry with me just now; I ought not to have followed you; forgive me,—I am not quite myself to-night.” “All right, Balfour, go back to your watch; I quite understand.” Balfour, however, did not seem disposed to quit my vicinity. I took no notice at first, but kept vigorously at the work; then in a pause I said, “My good fellow, you must return to your post, you cannot hear anything so near me, and it is quite necessary to keep a sharp look out, though all may be perfectly quiet, and every thing promise success.” While I yet spoke, we were startled by a remarkable sound above our heads, apparently close to us. A low whistling in the air, very strange and even sweet, seemed to wander and play about us. “What—is—this—now?” gasped my companion; “What is it, I say?” and he seized me convulsively by the arm. I was myself astonished, and could in no way explain this new phenomenon; however, I said hastily, “Birds, night birds, chirping round us—nothing more. “Wilder,” said Balfour, slowly, in a hollow and altered voice, “God sees us, and vouchsafes us a warning—this may be a dreadful sin that we are engaged in, come, let us go.” I was much more alarmed at Balfour’s evidently growing disturbance of mind than at the cause, and did what I could to reassure him. The sounds, as I seized the spade, suddenly ceased, and pushing him from me, in another moment I was hard at work. I had scarcely thrown out a dozen shovelsful of earth, before Balfour rushed wildly up, and exclaimed, “By Heaven there is something in the churchyard—there—close to the verge of the enclosure!”
Instantly I jumped out of the grave, and with straining eyes looked in the direction he indicated. I could see nothing.
Balfour was evidently pointing to some moving object, and following it with his finger, while he muttered words which, in the agitation of the moment, I did not understand. We stood close together, our eyes directed towards the opposite boundary wall; there, the solemn bushes were waving slowly in the night air against the illumined sky, but no other moving thing could I perceive.
At the same time, a new and extraordinary sense of undefinable solicitude and anxiety, a sense of something to be feared, crept through me; and as I now felt certain that with a man in Balfour’s excited state, verging upon insanity, I could hope for no assistance, but must expect every embarrassment, I determined to give up all farther attempt, and to leave the churchyard at once.