’In turning the outhouse into a workshop, earlier in the season, I found, when driving a nail into the wall for fixing a cupboard, that the wall sounded hollow.  I examined it, and discovered behind the plaster an old oven which had long been disused, and was bricked up when the house was prepared for me.

’To unfix this cupboard and pull out the bricks was the work of a few minutes.  Then, bearing in mind that I should have to remove the body again the next night, I placed it in a sack, pushed it into the oven, packed in the bricks, and replaced the cupboard.

’I then went to bed.  In bed, I thought whether there were any very remote possibilities that might lead to the supposition that my wife was not consumed by the flames of the burning house.  The thing which struck me most forcibly was this, that the searchers might think it odd that no remains whatever should be found.

’The clinching and triumphant deed would be to take the body and place it among the ruins of the destroyed house.  But I could not do this, on account of the men who were watching against an outbreak of the fire.  One remedy remained.

’I arose again, dressed myself, and went down to the outhouse.  I must take down the cupboard again.  I did take it down.  I pulled out the bricks, pulled out the sack, pulled out the corpse, and took her keys from her pocket and the watch from her side.

’I then replaced everything as before.

’With these articles in my pocket I went out of the yard, and took my way through the withy copse to the churchyard, entering it from the back.  Here I felt my way carefully along till I came to the nook where pieces of bones from newly-dug graves are sometimes piled behind the laurel-bushes.  I had been earnestly hoping to find a skull among these old bones; but though I had frequently seen one or two in the rubbish here, there was not one now.  I then groped in the other corner with the same result—­nowhere could I find a skull.  Three or four fragments of leg and back-bones were all I could collect, and with these I was forced to be content.

’Taking them in my hand, I crossed the road, and got round behind the inn, where the couch heap was still smouldering.  Keeping behind the hedge, I could see the heads of the three or four men who watched the spot.

’Standing in this place I took the bones, and threw them one by one over the hedge and over the men’s heads into the smoking embers.  When the bones had all been thrown, I threw the keys; last of all I threw the watch.

’I then returned home as I had gone, and went to bed once more, just as the dawn began to break.  I exulted—­“Cytherea is mine again!”

’At breakfast-time I thought, “Suppose the cupboard should by some unlikely chance get moved to-day!”

’I went to the mason’s yard hard by, while the men were at breakfast, and brought away a shovelful of mortar.  I took it into the outhouse, again shifted the cupboard, and plastered over the mouth of the oven behind.  Simply pushing the cupboard back into its place, I waited for the next night that I might bury the body, though upon the whole it was in a tolerably safe hiding-place.