ng it home to her yet, Harry, my boy. I'll get an order to
have poor old father exhumed, and the doctors shall tell us how much
of the arsenic that cursed old hag gave him.'

IV I don't know what you have to do to get an order to open up a
grave and look at the poor dead person after it is once put away,
but, whatever it was, John knew and did it.

We didn't tell any one except our dear old parson who buried the old
man; and he listened to all we had to say, and shook his head and
said, 'I think you are wrong--I think you are wrong,' but that was
only natural, him not liking to see his good work disturbed. But he
said he would be there.

Now, no one was told of it, and yet it seemed as if every one for
miles round knew more than we did about it.

Afore the day come, old Mrs. Jezebel up at the farm, she met me one
day, and she says, 'You're a pretty puss, aren't you, howking up my
poor dear deceased husband's remains before they're hardly cold?
Much good you'll do yourself. You'll end in the workhouse, my fine
miss, and I shall come to see you as a lady visitor when you're
dying.'

I tried to get past her, but she wouldn't let me. 'I wish you joy o'
that Harry, cursed young brute!' says she. 'It serves him right, it
does, to marry a girl out of the gutter!'

And with that--I couldn't help it--I fetched her a smack on the side
of the face with the flat of my hand as hard as I could, and bolted
off, her after me, and me being young and she stout she couldn't
keep up with me. Gutter, indeed! and my father a respectable
labourer, and known far and wide.

There were several strangers come the day the coffin was got up. It
was a dreadful thing to me to see them digging, not to make a grave
to be filled up, but to empty one. And there were a lot of people
there I didn't know; and the parson, and another parson, seemingly a
friend of his, and every one as could get near looking on.

They got the coffin up, and they took it to the room at the Star, at
Alfreston, where inquests are held, and the doctors were there, and
we were all shut out. And Harry and John and I stood on the stairs.
But parson, being a friend of the doctor's, he was let in, him and
his friend. And we heard voices and the squeak of the screws as they
was drawn out; and we heard the coffin lid being laid down, and then
there was a hush, and some one spoke up very sharp inside, and we
couldn't hear what he said for the noise and confusion that came
from