parishes for buryin' folk quick, an' I dessay the
coffin's ordered by this time, an' I dessay the gent gev you that
money just to make you comforble like, seein' as he killed your
darter." That's what Mrs. Mix says to me. So the parish comed an'
brought a coffin an' tookt her, pore dear. And I've cried myself
stupid-like, bein' her pore mother as 'es lost her on'y darter--an'
I was just a-tryin' to make myself comfable when this 'ere young toff
as seems so werry drunk comes a-rappin' at my door fit to rap the
'ouse down.'

'Has she been buried at all? How can a spiritual body be buried?'

'"Buried at all?" What do you mean by insinivatin' to the pore gal's
conflicted mother as she p'raps ain't buried at all? You're a-makin'
me cry ag'in. She lays comfable enough underneath a lot of other
coffins, in the pauper part of the New North Cimingtary.'

'Underneath a lot of others; how can that be?'

'What! ain't you toffs never seed a pauper finneral? Now that's a
pity; and sich nice toffs as they are, a-settin' theirselves up to
look arter the darters o' pore folks. P'raps you never thought how we
was buried. We're buried, when our time comes, and then they're werry
kind to us, the parish toffs is:--It's in a lump--six at a time--as
they buries us, and sich nice deal coffins they makes us, the parish
toffs does, an' sich nice lamp-black they paints 'em with to make 'em
look as if they was covered over with the best black velvid; an' then
sich a nice sarmint--none o' your retail sarmints, but a hulsale
sarmint--they reads over the lot, an' into one hole they packs us one
atop o' the other, jest like a pile o' the werry best Yarmith
bloaters, an' that's a good deal more sociable an' comfable, the
parish toffs thinks, than puttin' us in single; so it is, for the
matter o' that.'

Then I heard no more; for at the intolerable picture called up by the
woman's words, my soul in its misery seemed to have soared, scared
and trembling, above and beyond the heavens at whose futile gates it
had been moaning, till at last it sank at the feet of the mighty
power that my love had striven with on the sands of Raxton when the
tide was coming in--some pale and cruel ruler whose brow I saw
wrinkled with the woman's mocking smile--some frightful
columbine-queen, wicked, bowelless, and blind, shaking a starry cap
and bells, and chanting--

I lent the drink of Day
To gods for feast;
I poured the river of Night