Some one walked thrice round the house. But they did not, like their parents, recognize the sound of the footsteps. They were those of a stranger, or else steps that had changed their tread. Then, for a few minutes, they heard nothing more. And suddenly another sound arose; and, though in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they were nevertheless stupefied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow voice, laying stress upon each syllable, uttered the sentence which his father had written twenty years before:
“It’s the sound which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax.”
Yes, It must be that. Some one was digging the ground, not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen.
And so the abominable miracle of the revived tragedy was continuing. Here again the former act was repeated, a simple enough act in itself, but one which became sinister because it was one of those which had already been performed and because it was announcing and preparing the death once before announced and prepared.
An hour passed. The work went on, paused and went on again. It was like the sound of a spade at work in a courtyard, when the grave-digger is in no hurry and takes a rest and then resumes his work.
Patrice and Coralie stood listening side by side, their eyes in each other’s eyes, their hands in each other’s hands.
“He’s stopping,” whispered Patrice.
“Yes,” said Coralie; “only I think . . .”
“Yes, Coralie, there’s some one in the hall. . . . Oh, we need not trouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: ‘He goes to the kitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.’ . . . And then . . . and then . . . oh, Coralie, the same sound of broken glass!”
It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and the past formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when these took place.