first," said the boy; "open the lid, Dick, let's have a look."

"Ah, you're a rum un," said Dick, "arter my own heart. I sometimes
thinks as you must be a nevy, or some sort of relation of mine.
Howsomdever, here goes. Who'd a thought that I should ever had a look at
old fat and thunder again?--that's what I used to call him; and then he
used to request me to go down below, where I needn't turn round to light
my blessed pipe."

"Hell--we know," said the boy; "why don't you open the lid, Dick?"

"I'm a going," said Dick; "kim up."

He introduced the corner of a shovel between the lid and the coffin, and
giving it a sudden wrench, he loosened it all down one side.

A shudder pervaded the multitude, and, popularly speaking, you might
have heard a pin drop in that crowded churchyard at that eventful
moment.

Dick then proceeded to the other side, and executed the same manoeuvre.

"Now for it," he said; "we shall see him in a moment, and we'll think we
seed him still."

"What a lark!" said the boy.

"You hold yer jaw, will yer? Who axed you for a remark, blow yer? What
do you mean by squatting down there, like a cock-sparrow, with a pain in
his tail, hanging yer head, too, right over the coffin? Did you never
hear of what they call a fluvifium coming from the dead, yer ignorant
beast, as is enough to send nobody to blazes in a minute? Get out of the
way of the cold meat, will yer?"

"A what, do you say, Dick?"

"Request information from the extreme point of my elbow."

Dick threw down the spade, and laying hold of the coffin-lid with both
hands, he lifted it off, and flung it on one side.

There was a visible movement and an exclamation among the multitude.
Some were pushed down, in the eager desire of those behind to obtain a
sight of the ghastly remains of the butcher; those at a distance were
frantic, and the excitement was momentarily increasing.

They might all have spared themselves the trouble, for the coffin was
empty--here was no dead butcher, nor any evidence of one ever having
been there, not even the grave-clothes; the only thing at all in the
receptacle of the dead was a brick.

Dick's astonishment was so intense that his eyes and mouth kept opening
together to such an extent, that it seemed doubtful when they would
reach their extreme point of elongation. He then took up the brick and
looked at it curiously, and turned it over and over, examined the ends
and the sides with a critical eye, and