We figured the cemetery men would fill the graves by lantern light; and knowing something of their hours of employment we imagined that with this job disposed of they would probably turn to and dig graves by night, making them ready against the needs of the following morning.

The new graves always were ready.

They were made in advance, and still there were rarely enough of them, no matter how long or how hard the diggers kept at their work.

At Aix-la-Chapelle, for example, in the principal cemetery the sexton's men dug twenty new graves every morning.

By evening there would be twenty shaped mounds of clay where the twenty holes had been.