re 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
less puzzled as to how Cock Robin had been moved from the stony place to
the soft earth, and who dug his grave. I could not ask Nurse about it,
for I should have had to tell her I had been out, and I could not have
trusted Mrs. Jones either; but Godfather Gilpin never tells tales of me,
and he knows everything, so I went to him.

The more I thought of it the more I saw that the only way was to tell
him everything; for if you only tell parts of things you sometimes find
yourself telling lies before you know where you are. So I put on my
cloak and my mask, and took the shovel and bier into the study, and sat
down on the little foot-stool I always wait on when Godfather Gilpin is
in the middle of reading, and keeps his head down to show that he does
not want to be disturbed.

When he shut up his book and looked at me he burst out laughing. I meant
to have asked him why, but I was so busy afterwards I forgot. I suppose
it was the nose, for it had got rather broken when I fell down as I was
burying the old drake that Neptune killed.

But he was very kind to me, and I told