"You must put the room to rights," she commanded. "Make 'en look as though James and I had just had our bit o' supper. Mop up the water and sweep all the broken cloam together—and—and take him to the passage-way."
"You'm not going to lave me alone wi' he?" cried Willie aghast.
"Edn room for me to work here. I'l be up overstairs making the mask. Keep t' curtain over the window."
Upstairs, she seized scissors and hacked a square out of the front of her gown. Then she sat and sewed as she had sewed once before, when her husband had lain motionless on the bed. Every now and then came small sounds of things being moved from down below, then a heavy fall and the sound of something being dragged.
"How's et goin', Willie?" she called out.
"'Tes all right," he called back. "I've put 'en in passage."
The moon was near setting when the mask was finished, and she went to the top of the stairs with it in her hand.
"There 'tes," she whispered. "I'll drop it down. Put it in your pocket and I'll change my gown. 'Tes time we were stirrin'."
The mask fluttered down in the darkness, and she went back to her room and changed swiftly into the old serge.
It was a ghastly journey to the old mine shaft, the heavy form of the dead man sagging between them. They dared have no light, and went stumbling over tussocks and ruts; but as both would have known the way blindfold, they found the shaft without difficulty. They scrambled up the sloping rubble of stones and tipped the body over the jagged hole in the side of the shaft, and after what seemed an interminable silence there came a thud from several hundred feet below them, then another, as though the body had rebounded, then all was stillness.