"Almost eighteen years."
"I hope you care to live?"
"I can't say."
Dig-dig-dig-until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave.
"Buried how long?"
"Almost eighteen years."
"You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?"
"Long ago."
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken-distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life-when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun.