I was as certain as I had ever been of anything that I did not think
about this till then, but when I got to the quarry the body was gone
from the place where I had found it; and when I looked lower, on the bit
of soft earth there lay Robin, just in the place where I was settling in
my mind that I would bury him.

I could not believe my eyes through the holes in my mask, so I pulled it
off, but there was no doubt about the fact. There he lay; and round him,
when I looked closer, I saw a ridge like a rampart of earth, which
framed him neatly and evenly, as if he were already halfway into his
grave.

The moonlight was as clear as day, there was no mistake as to what I
saw, and whilst I was looking the body of the bird began to sink by
little jerks, as if some one were pulling it from below. When first it
moved I thought that poor Robin could not be dead after all, and that he
was coming to life again like the flying watchman, but I soon saw that
he was not, and that some one was pulling him down into a grave.

When I felt quite sure of this, when I had rubbed my eyes to clear them,
and pulled up the lashes to see if I was awake, I was so horribly
frightened that, with my mask in one hand and the spade and the handle
of my bier in the other, I ran home as fast as my legs would carry me,
leaving the roses and the cross and the blue-velvet pall behind me in
the quarry.

Nurse was still out; and I crept back to bed without detection, where I
dreamed disturbedly of invisible gravediggers all through the night.

I did not feel quite so much afraid by daylight, but I was not a bit