adow. He was temporizing, making,
with unconscious prudence, a dilatory opposition to an impending
catastrophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil were closing in upon
him, and he parleyed for time with the Inevitable.

He now observed in succession several unusual circumstances. The surface
of the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened was not flat; it
presented two distinct ridges, one longitudinal and the other
transverse. Where these intersected at the widest part there was a
corroded metallic plate that reflected the moonlight with a dismal
lustre. Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long intervals, were
rust-eaten heads of nails. This frail product of the carpenter's art had
been put into the grave the wrong side up!

Perhaps it was one of the humors of the camp--a practical manifestation
of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the
topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great
humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable
to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable
hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr.
Barney Bree, who, making the interment unassisted (either by choice for
the conservation of his golden secret, or through public apathy), had
committed a blunder which he was afterward unable or unconcerned to
rectify. However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put
into the earth face downward.

When terror and absurdity make alliance, the effect is frightful. This
strong-hearted and daring man, this hardy night worker among the dead,
this defiant antagonist of darkness and desolation, succumbed to a
ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a thrilling chill--shivered,
and shook his massive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. He no
longer breathed, and the blood in his veins, unable to abate its
impetus, surged hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened with oxygen, it
mounted to his head and congested his brain. His physical functions had
gone over to the enemy; his very heart was arrayed against him. He did
not move; he could not have cried out. He needed but a coffin to be
dead--as dead as the death that confronted him with only the length of
an open grave and the thickness of a rotting plank between.

Then, one by one, his senses returned; the tide of terror that had
overwhelmed his faculties began to recede. But with the return of his
senses he became singu