We were joined at the end of five minutes by another man, who fell into step with the doctor silently.  He carried something over his shoulder which I could not make out.  In this way we walked for perhaps twenty minutes.  I had lost all sense of direction:  I merely stumbled along in silence, allowing Mr. Jamieson to guide me this way or that as the path demanded.  I hardly know what I expected.  Once, when through a miscalculation I jumped a little short over a ditch and landed above my shoe-tops in the water and ooze, I remember wondering if this were really I, and if I had ever tasted life until that summer.  I walked along with the water sloshing in my boots, and I was actually cheerful.  I remember whispering to Mr. Jamieson that I had never seen the stars so lovely, and that it was a mistake, when the Lord had made the night so beautiful, to sleep through it!

The doctor was puffing somewhat when we finally came to a halt.  I confess that just at that minute even Sunnyside seemed a cheerful spot.  We had paused at the edge of a level cleared place, bordered all around with primly trimmed evergreen trees.  Between them I caught a glimpse of starlight shining down on rows of white headstones and an occasional more imposing monument, or towering shaft.  In spite of myself, I drew my breath in sharply.  We were on the edge of the Casanova churchyard.

I saw now both the man who had joined the party and the implements he carried.  It was Alex, armed with two long-handled spades.  After the first shock of surprise, I flatter myself I was both cool and quiet.  We went in single file between the rows of headstones, and although, when I found myself last, I had an instinctive desire to keep looking back over my shoulder, I found that, the first uneasiness past, a cemetery at night is much the same as any other country place, filled with vague shadows and unexpected noises.  Once, indeed—­but Mr. Jamieson said it was an owl, and I tried to believe him.

In the shadow of the Armstrong granite shaft we stopped.  I think the doctor wanted to send me back.

“It’s no place for a woman,” I heard him protesting angrily.  But the detective said something about witnesses, and the doctor only came over and felt my pulse.

“Anyhow, I don’t believe you’re any worse off here than you would be in that nightmare of a house,” he said finally, and put his coat on the steps of the shaft for me to sit on.

There is an air of finality about a grave:  one watches the earth thrown in, with the feeling that this is the end.  Whatever has gone before, whatever is to come in eternity, that particular temple of the soul has been given back to the elements from which it came.  Thus, there is a sense of desecration, of a reversal of the everlasting fitness of things, in resurrecting a body from its mother clay.  And yet that night, in the Casanova churchyard, I sat quietly by, and watched Alex and Mr. Jamieson steaming over their work, without a single qualm, except the fear of detection.