The tale of a negligent and lazy village gravedigger who receives a harsh lesson and realizes that diligent fulfillment of duties pays off.
The idea for the story was sent to Lovecraft by C. W. Smith, the publisher of the magazine "The Tryout" (in which the text was first published – the last case when Lovecraft's story would appear first in an amateur newspaper). The publisher of "Weird Tales" rejected the story, even though it seemed tailor-made for the magazine's undemanding readership. The likely reason for this reluctance was the macabre nature of the text, which dealt with the deceased, and it was precisely because of such themes in one of Lovecraft's stories that "Weird Tales" had problems with the authorities."
