“The spade?”
“Ay, it stands in the corner—Oi ain’t used it since my old lurcher died. D’ye think he’s in heaven—Rover—and all they rats we digged up together?”
“You’re not going to dig up a rat?” she said in horror.
“No fear. But Oi won’t have nobody else ferret it out.” And from his bed he tried to shovel away the earth near the stove. But his strength failed. She took his spade. “I’ll do it. What is it?”
“ ’Tis in the earth,” he panted, “like Oi’ll be. And Oi reckon Oi’d as soon be buried here as anywheres.”
She turned faint. Did he mean her to dig his grave?
“This isn’t consecrated ground,” she said feebly.
“Oi count it’s got as lovely a smell as the churchyard earth,” he said. “But let ’em bury me where they will, so long as Oi don’t wake up. Ye ain’t diggin’, Jinny.”
Mystified and trembling, and wishing she had not come without Will, she stuck the spade in deeper and threw up the clods. Set her teeth as she might, she could not shake off the thought that she was digging his grave, and they began to chatter despite the warmth from the stove. The lurid glow streaming from it seemed sinister in the darkness of the windowless hut, and she paused to let in a streak of moonlight through a gap in the door. But the night outside in its vastness and under its blue glamour seemed even more frightening, and the cold blast that blew in made the ancient cough again. She reclosed the door, and with trembling spade resumed her strange task. Suddenly her blade struck a metallic object.
“That’s it!” he cried gleefully. “And ye wanted to put boards over it!”