His voice sounded very awful, coming as it did out of the deep grave, and the child ran away, and disappeared as suddenly as she had come.
Solomon looked up several times afterwards as he threw up fresh spadefuls of earth, but for some time he saw no more of his little visitor. But she was not far away; she was hiding behind a high tombstone, and in a few minutes she took courage, and went again to the top of the grave. This time she did not speak, but stood with her finger in her mouth, looking shyly down upon him, as her long brown hair blew wildly about in the breeze.
Solomon thought he had never seen such a pretty little thing. He had had a little girl once, and though she had been dead more than thirty years, he had not quite forgotten her.
"What do they call you, my little dear?" said he, as gently as his husky old voice would let him say it.
"Dot," said the child, nodding her head at him from the top of the grave.
"That's a very funny name," said Solomon. "I can't think on that I ever heard it afore."
"Dot isn't my real name; they call me Ruth in my father's big Bible on our parlour table."
"That's got nothing to do with Dot as I can see," said the grave-digger musingly.
"No," she said, shaking her long brown hair out of her eyes; "it's 'cause I'm such a little dot of a thing that they call me Dot."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Solomon; and then he went into a deep meditation on names, and called to mind some strange ones which he read on the old churchyard gravestones.