He had not the refinement and acuteness of mind necessary to make him understand the disinterested element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him that the promise to the dead was broken, and he thought upon such calamities as might befall in token of the dead man's revenge.
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.