ieved in his
strength to do it, though the carrier said: it looks as if two men, or
more like three, would be needed. But it is as you like, Master. On this
he went to his oxen, thinking of the Sabbath, and whether Joseph had
forgotten how near it was to them. He hasn't blown out his lantern yet.
My word, he be going back into the tomb, the carrier said; maybe he's
forgotten something, or maybe to have a last look at his friend. He
talks like one in a dream, or one that hadn't half recovered his wits.

And it was just in the mood which the carrier divined that Joseph
entered the tomb: life had been coming and going like a dream ever since
he met the masons; and asking himself if he were truly awake and in his
seven senses, he returned to bid Jesus a last farewell, though he would
not have been astonished if he sought him in vain through the darkness
filled with the dust of freshly cut stones and the smell thereof. But
Jesus was where they had laid him; and Joseph sate himself by the dead
Master's side, so that he might meditate and come to see better into the
meanings of things, for all meaning seemed to have gone out of life for
him since he had come up from Jericho. The flickering shadows and lights
distracted his meditation, and set him thinking of the masons and their
pride in their work; he looked round the sepulchre and perceived it to
be a small chamber with a couch at the farther end.... Martha and Mary
have gone, he said to himself, and he remembered he had bidden them go
hence to prepare spices, and to return after the Sabbath. Which they
will do as soon as the Sabbath is over, he repeated to himself, as if to
convince himself that he was not dreaming.... God did not save him in
the end as he expected he would, he continued: he'd have done better to
have given Pilate answers whereby Pilate would have been able to save
him from the cross. Pilate was anxious to save him, but, as Nicodemus
said, Jesus had come to think that it had been decreed in heaven that
his blood must be spilt, so that he might rise again, as it were, out of
his own blood, to return in a chariot with his Father in three days....
But will he return to inhabit again this beautiful mould? Joseph asked,
and striving against the doubt that the sight of the dead put into his
mind, he left the tomb with the intention of rolling the stone into the
door. Better not to see him than to doubt him, he said. But who will, he
asked himself, roll away the st