dyke. "The body
may, of course, be anywhere in the entire world, but the place where it
is lying is either inside or outside the general boundary of those two
parishes. If it has been deposited within the boundary of those two
parishes, the fact must be ascertainable by examining the burial
certificates issued since the date when the missing man was last seen
alive and by consulting the registers of those specified places of
burial. I think that if no record can be found of any such interment
within the boundary of those two parishes, that fact will be taken by
the Court as proof that no such interment has taken place, and that
therefore the body must have been deposited somewhere else. Such a
decision would constitute George Hurst the co-executor and residuary
legatee."

"That is cheerful for your friends, Berkeley," Jervis remarked, "for we
may take it as pretty certain that the body has not been deposited in
any of the places named."

"Yes," I agreed gloomily, "I'm afraid there is very little doubt of
that. But what an ass that fellow must have been to make such a to-do
about his beastly carcass! What the deuce could it have mattered to
him where it was dumped, when he had done with it?"

Thorndyke chuckled softly. "Thus the irreverent youth of to-day," said
he. "But yours is hardly a fair comment, Berkeley. Our training makes
us materialists, and puts us a little out of sympathy with those in
whom primitive beliefs and emotions survive. A worthy priest who came
to look at our dissecting-room expressed surprise to me that the
students, thus constantly in the presence of relics of mortality,
should be able to think of anything but the resurrection and the life
hereafter. He was a bad psychologist. There is nothing so dead as a
dissecting-room 'subject'; and the contemplation of the human body in
the process of being quietly taken to pieces--being resolved into its
structural units like a worn-out clock or an old engine in the
scrapper's yard--is certainly not conducive to a vivid realization of
the doctrine of the resurrection."

"No; but this absurd anxiety to be buried in some particular place has
nothing to do with religious belief; it is merely silly sentiment."

"It is sentiment, I admit," said Thorndyke, "but I wouldn't call it
silly. The feeling is so widespread in time and space that we must
look on it with respect as something inherent in human nature.
Think--as doubtless John Bellingham di