could easily be deceived about as he sat with his
elbow on the coffin. He sat there not one instant longer; the next
moment he was twenty feet away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the
brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, ready to plunge into the
icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required.
Occasion did not require. The oxen dozed on; the cart, the barrel, and
the coffin stood just as he had left them.

Perhaps for five minutes the frightened man was still. Gradually his
muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all
drawn in horror away from the coffin. He next pulled back his foot from
the icy marsh; but even then, having regained his equilibrium on the
road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to
turn over the situation in his mind. He had heard the dead man move; he
was terribly frightened; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any
way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till
nightfall. He had run backward in his first alarm; so, to get to the
nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pass the cart on the road,
even if he left it there. Had any further manifestation of vitality
appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in
running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure. He did
not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost
as fearsome. He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing
that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue. He supposed that as long
as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the
deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to
get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the
compass. He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some
reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had
undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move,
and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.

After some further delay he discovered that the course least
disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voice and walk as far
behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on
its lid well in view. Accordingly, making a great effort to encourage
himself to break the silence, he raised his shout in the accustomed
command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or