CHAPTER XXIV.
Hamlet: Has this fellow no feeling of his business?
he sings at grave making.
Horatio: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
Hamlet: 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
Hamlet, Act V.Scene 1.
THE sleep of Ravenswood was broken by ghastly and agitating visions, and his waking intervals disturbed by melancholy reflections on the past and painful anticipations of the future.

He was perhaps the only traveller who ever slept in that miserable kennel without complaining of his lodgings, or feeling inconvenience from their deficiencies.

It is when "the mind is free the body's delicate." Morning, however, found the Master an early riser, in hopes that the fresh air of the dawn might afford the refreshment which night had refused him.

He took his way towards the solitary burial-ground, which lay about half a mile from the inn.
The thin blue smoke, which already began to curl upward, and to distinguish the cottage of the living from the habitation of the dead, apprised him that its inmate had returned and was stirring.

Accordingly, on entering the little churchyard, he saw the old man labouring in a half-made grave.