How awfully silent it was!  There was no breath in the chill, still air; there was no sound of life in all the dark, close brushwood; the oxen slept; and Saul, appalled by the silence that had come with his silence, appalled to realise more vividly than ever that he, and he alone, had been the instigator of voice in all that region, was cowed into thinking that, if the dead could rise from the grave for purposes of revenge, how much more easily could he rise now from so crude a coffin as he himself had helped to construct for him!

It was in this absolute silence that he heard a sound.  He heard the dead man turn in his coffin!  He heard, and did not doubt his hearing; it was not a thing that he could easily be deceived about as he sat with his elbow on the coffin.  He sat there not one instant longer; the next moment he was twenty feet away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, ready to plunge into the icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required.  Occasion did not require.  The oxen dozed on; the cart, the barrel, and the coffin stood just as he had left them.

Perhaps for five minutes the frightened man was still.  Gradually his muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all drawn in horror away from the coffin.  He next pulled back his foot from the icy marsh; but even then, having regained his equilibrium on the road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to turn over the situation in his mind.  He had heard the dead man move; he was terribly frightened; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till nightfall.  He had run backward in his first alarm; so, to get to the nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pass the cart on the road, even if he left it there.  Had any further manifestation of vitality appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure.  He did not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost as fearsome.  He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue.  He supposed that as long as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the compass.  He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost.  His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.