The Buffer clambered to the top of the wall, which was not very high; and the Resurrection Man handed him the implements and tools, which he dropped cautiously upon the ground inside the enclosure.
He then helped his companion upon the wall; and in another moment they stood together within the cemetery.
"Are you sure you can find the way to the right grave?" demanded the Buffer in a whisper.
"Don't be afraid," was the reply: "I could go straight up to it blindfold."
They then shouldered their implements, and the Resurrection Man led the way to the spot where Mrs. Smith's anonymous lodger had been buried.
"I'm afeard the ground's precious hard," observed the Buffer, when he and his companion had satisfied themselves by a cautious glance around that no one was watching their movements.
The eyes of these men had become so habituated to the obscurity of night, in consequence of the frequency with which they pursued their avocations during the darkness which cradled others to rest, that they were possessed of the visual acuteness generally ascribed to the cat.
"We'll soon turn it up, let it be as hard as it will," said the Resurrection Man, in answer to his comrade's remark.
Then, suiting the action to the word, he began his operations in the following manner.
He measured a distance of five paces from the head of the grave. At the point thus marked he took a long iron rod and drove it in an oblique direction through the ground towards one end of the coffin. So accurate were his calculations relative to the precise spot in which the coffin was embedded in the earth, that the iron rod struck against it the very first time he thus sounded the soil.