e was a rattling in the heap; something
warm and soft touched my fingers.

I started and shivered. Then I exclaimed: "The rats! nothing but the
rats in the churchyard! I must not get frightened. It will be so
foolish--they would laugh at me. Where the devil is that arm? I can't
find one that isn't broken!"

With trembling knees and in feverish haste I examined one heap after
another. The light in my lantern flickered in the wind and suddenly
went out. The foul smell of the smoking wick rose to my face and I
felt as if I were about to faint. It took all my energy to recover my
control. I walked two or three steps ahead, and saw at a little
distance a coffin which had been still in good shape when taken out of
the earth.

I approached it and saw that it was of old-fashioned shape, made of
heavy oaken boards that were already rotting. On its cover was a metal
plate with an illegible inscription. The old wood was so brittle that
it would have been very easy for me to open the coffin with any sort
of a tool. I looked about me and saw a hatchet and a couple of spades
lying near the fence. I took one of the latter, put its flat end
between the boards--the old coffin fell apart with a dull crackling
protest.

I turned my head aside, put my hand in through the opening, felt
about, and taking a firm hold on one arm of the skeleton, I loosened
it from the body with a quick jerk. The movement loosened the head as
well, and it rolled out through the opening right to my very feet. I
took up the skull to lay it in the coffin again--and then I saw a
greenish phosphorescent glimmer in its empty eye sockets, a glimmer
which came and went. Mad terror shook me at the sight. I looked up at
the houses in the distance, then back again to the skull; the empty
sockets shone more brightly than before. I felt that I must have some
natural explanation for this appearance or I would go mad. I took up
the head again--and never in my life have I had so overpowering an
impression of the might of death and decay than in this moment.
Myriads of disgusting clammy insects poured out of every opening of
the skull, and a couple of shining, wormlike centipedes--_Geophiles_,
the scientists call them--crawled about in the eye sockets. I threw
the skull back into the coffin, sprang over the heaps of bones without
even taking time to pick up my lantern, and ran like a hunted thing
through the dark mill, over the factory courtyards, until I reached
the oute