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It seemed to her that a man able to remain without food for three days must necessarily be a very dangerous character. For, indeed, honest folks never placed themselves in such a position. Florent was now almost stifling. In front of him the stove, into which Leon had just thrown several shovelfuls of coal, was snoring like a lay clerk asleep in the sun; and the heat was very great.
Then the terrible moment arrived, the lowering of the coffin and the sound of the first earth upon it; for, formerly the company awaited this last act. This was not the formal dust to dust, a verbal and figurative act, but some shovelfuls of real earth that for a few moments rattled and pounded the top of the coffin with a heart-rending sound.
This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column of fire.
Th' bell will ring in two or three minutes, an' I should like yo to see 'em knock off." We hurried over to the other side, and, before we had been a minute there, the bell rung. At the first toll, down dropt the barrows, the half-flung shovelfuls fell to the ground, and all labour stopt as suddenly as if the men had been moved by the pull of one string.
When it was over, the coffin was laid into the grave, and the blessed clay shaken over it. The priest now took the shovel in his own hands, and threw in the three first shovelfuls one in the name of the Father, one in the name of the Son, and one in the name of the Holy Ghost. The sexton then took it, and in a short time Denis Kelly was fixed for ever in his narrow bed.
I followed the instructions of my fruit book closely, and cut back the canes of the plants to six inches, and sunk the roots so deep as to leave about four inches of soil above them, putting two or three plants in the hill. Then over and about the hills we put on the surface of the ground two shovelfuls of compost, finally covering the plants beneath a slight mound of earth.