He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue.

He supposed that as long as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the compass.

He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost.

His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.
After some further delay he discovered that the course least disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voice and walk as far behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on its lid well in view.

Accordingly, making a great effort to encourage himself to break the silence, he raised his shout in the accustomed command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or twice, they strained at the cart and set themselves to the road again.