about that," said one; "when did a natural
Christian's coffin stick in the mud in that way?"

"Ah, to be sure," said another; "I knew no good would come of his goings
on; he never was a decent sort of man like his neighbours, and many
queer things have been said of him that I have no doubt are true enough,
if we did but know the rights of them."

"Ah, but," said a young lad, thrusting his head between the two who were
talking, "if he is a vampyre, how does he get out of his coffin of a
night with all that weight of mould a top of him?"

One of the men considered for a moment, and then finding no rational
answer occur to him, he gave the boy a box on the ear, saying,--

"I should like to know what business that is of yours? Boys, now-a-days,
ain't like the boys in my time; they think nothing now of putting their
spokes in grown-up people's wheels, just as if their opinions were of
any consequence."

Now, by a vigorous effort, those who were tugging at the ropes succeeded
in moving the coffin a little, and that first step was all the
difficulty, for it was loosened from the adhesive soil in which it lay,
and now came up with considerable facility.

There was a half shout of satisfaction at this result, while some of the
congregation turned pale, and trembled at the prospect of the sight
which was about to present itself; the coffin was dragged from the
grave's brink fairly among the long rank grass that flourished in the
churchyard, and then they all looked at it for a time, and the men who
had been most earnest in raising it wiped the perspiration from their
brows, and seemed to shrink from the task of opening that receptacle of
the dead now that it was fairly in their power so to do.

Each man looked anxiously in his neighbour's face, and several audibly
wondered why somebody else didn't open the coffin.

"There's no harm in it," said one; "if he's a vampyre, we ought to know
it; and, if he ain't, we can't do any hurt to a dead man."

"Oughtn't we to have the service for the dead?" said one.

"Yes," said the impertinent boy who had before received the knock on the
head, "I think we ought to have that read backwards."

This ingenious idea was recompensed by a great many kicks and cuffs,
which ought to have been sufficient to have warned him of the great
danger of being a little before his age in wit.

"Where's the use of shirking the job?" cried he who had been so active
in shoveling the mud upon the multitu