e light of which the group before
me is brought out in faint relief. The silence around was signally that of
a churchyard; for the fir belt shrouded the scene from the night breeze,
and there was only occasionally heard a low, mournful gust, as it died
among the branches of the trees. On that spot only there was quick
breathing action. The men had got down pretty far into the grave; and, as
they brought their heads within the ray of the lantern, in their acts of
throwing up the earth, their flushed faces contrasted strongly with the
cadaverous countenance of the husband, who leant over them, watching every
motion, and intent upon the expected stroke of the shovel upon the coffin
lid. The recollection of the attributes of the German ghoul came over me;
nor did the difference between the beings, the motives, and the actions,
prevent me from conjuring up the similitude, so unlike a human being did he
appear in his complexion, his fixed, dead-like stare into the grave, and
the perfect stillness of his body, as he crouched down to be nearer to the
object of his search. At length, the sound was heard, the rattle on the
coffin lid. The victim's ear seemed chained to the sound, as if he could
have augured from it whether or not the chest was empty. In a short time,

"The heavy moil that shrouds the dead"

was entirely removed. The sexton now took his own lamp down into the grave.
The screw-nails were undone, the lid was raised, and the body of Mrs B----,
arrayed in her winding-sheet and scalloped sere-clothes, was seen, by the
sickly, yellow gleam of the lantern, lying in the stillness and placidity
of death--

"For still, still she lay,
With a wreath on her bosom."

One of the men now came out, and Mr B---- descended into the grave. He
lifted off the face-cloth, gazed on the clay-cold face, touched it, and now
was opened the

"Sacred source of sympathetic tears."

He burst into a loud paroxysm; and, as if nature had been to take her
revenge for her sufferings, under the freezing influence of his sorrow, he
wept as if there had been to be no end of his weeping. It was latterly
found necessary to force him out of the grave; though, as I was informed by
George, he had shrunk from the view of the dead body of his wife, while it
lay in the house, and before it was interred. The lid was again placed on
the coffin, the screws fixed, and the grave filled up. Mr B---- slipped a
guinea into the hand of the sexton,