“I am frightened, my husband.  But it is sweet to hear thy voice, hoarse and hollow as it is from the mould of the grave.  Thank the good God thou didst bury me with the rosary in my hands,” and she began telling the beads rapidly.

“If God is good,” cried Francois, harshly, and his voice came plainly to the priest’s ears, as if the lid of the coffin had rotted, “why are we awakened before our time?  What foul fiend was it that thundered and screamed through the frozen avenues of my brain?  Has God, perchance, been vanquished and does the Evil One reign in His stead?”

“Tut, tut!  Thou blasphemest!  God reigns, now and always.  It is but a punishment He has laid upon us for the sins of earth.”

“Truly, we were punished enough before we descended to the peace of this narrow house.  Ah, but it is dark and cold!  Shall we lie like this for an eternity, perhaps?  On earth we longed for death, but feared the grave.  I would that I were alive again, poor and old and alone and in pain.  It were better than this.  Curse the foul fiend that woke us!”

“Curse not, my son,” said a soft voice, and the priest stood up and uncovered and crossed himself, for it was the voice of his aged predecessor.  “I cannot tell thee what this is that has rudely shaken us in our graves and freed our spirits of their blessed thraldom, and I like not the consciousness of this narrow house, this load of earth on my tired heart.  But it is right, it must be right, or it would not be at all—­ah, me!”

For a baby cried softly, hopelessly, and from a grave beyond came a mother’s anguished attempt to still it.

“Ah, the good God!” she cried.  “I, too, thought it was the great call, and that in a moment I should rise and find my child and go to my Ignace, my Ignace whose bones lie white on the floor of the sea.  Will he find them, my father, when the dead shall rise again?  To lie here and doubt!—­that were worse than life.”

“Yes, yes,” said the priest; “all will be well, my daughter.”

“But all is not well, my father, for my baby cries and is alone in a little box in the ground.  If I could claw my way to her with my hands—­but my old mother lies between us.”

“Tell your beads!” commanded the priest, sternly—­“tell your beads, all of you.  All ye that have not your beads, say the ‘Hail Mary!’ one hundred times.”

Immediately a rapid, monotonous muttering arose from every lonely chamber of that desecrated ground.  All obeyed but the baby, who still moaned with the hopeless grief of deserted children.  The living priest knew that they would talk no more that night, and went into the church to pray till dawn.  He was sick with horror and terror, but not for himself.  When the sky was pink and the air full of the sweet scents of morning, and a piercing scream tore a rent in the early silences, he hastened out and sprinkled his graves with a double allowance of holy-water.  The train rattled by with two short derisive shrieks, and before the earth had ceased to tremble the priest laid his ear to the ground.  Alas, they were still awake!