impression of flight the
pace might give to the revenue-raider in pursuit. The men were soon
engrossed in their deceptive enterprise in the churchyard, plying pickax
and shovel for dear life; now and again they paused to listen vainly
for the sound of stealthy approach. They knew that there was the most
precarious and primitive of foot-bridges across the deep stream, to
traverse which would cost an unaccustomed wayfarer both time and pains;
thus the interval was considerable before the resonance of rapid
foot-falls gave token that their pursuer had found himself obliged to
sprint smartly along the country road to keep any hope of ever again
viewing the wagon which the intervening water-course had withdrawn from
his sight. That this hope had grown tenuous was evident in his
relinquishment of his former caution, for when they again caught a
glimpse of him he was forging along in the middle of the road without
any effort at concealment. But as the wagon appeared in the perspective,
stationary, hitched to the hedge of the graveyard, he recurred to his
previous methods. The four men still within the inclosure, now busied in
shovelling the earth back again into the excavation they had so swiftly
made, covertly watched him as he skulked into the shadow of the wayside.
The little "church-house," with all its windows whitely aglare in the
moonlight, reflected the pervasive sheen, and silent, spectral, remote,
it seemed as if it might well harbor at times its ghastly neighbors from
the quiet cemetery without, dimly ranging themselves once more in the
shadowy ranks of its pews or grimly stalking down the drear and deserted
aisles. The fact that the rising ground toward the rear of the building
necessitated a series of steps at the entrance, enabled the officer to
mask behind this tall flight his crouching approach, and thus he
ensconced himself in the angle between the wall and the steps, and
looked forth in fancied security.

The shadows multiplied the tale of the dead that the head-boards kept,
each similitude askew in the moonlight on the turf below the slanting
monument. To judge by the motions of the men engaged in the burial and
the mocking antics of their silhouettes on the ground, it must have been
obvious to the spectator that they were already filling in the earth.
The interment may have seemed to him suspiciously swift, but the
possibility was obvious that the grave might have been previously dug in
anticipation of the