. The old pagan!

Anchored in the foot-wall of this cell, ladder-like, were iron rungs
which had enabled him on past occasions to descend and inspect his
subterranean property; as, on this occasion, he made the trip to deposit
Shep's unfinished wooden chain.

The stone slab sealing the cell had long been cut with the dangerous
advertisement:

HERE LIES CHAUNCEY
D'AUTREVILLE WHOSE WORLDLY
GOODS WERE ANY MAN'S FOR
THE ASKING.

Naturally, a new inscription had to be chiseled.

"But there ain't any more room in that piece, Chauncey," the
stone-cutter objected. "You want 'nother stone."

"Turn it upside down and cut it in the bottom," Old Chauncey directed.
"With that topside staring him in the face, he'll have something to read
in the hereafter."

The underside, becoming the face, carried the inscription:

HERE LIES SHEPARD
FRANKENFIELD WHO FEELS
NO ANXIETY FOR THE FUTURE
NOR REGRET FOR THE PAST.

On the day preceding Old Shep's interment, Old Chauncey paid a visit to
the nearest justice of the peace with Celia Lilleoden and no one thought
it was in the least peculiar. As Chauncey balanced accounts with
himself, the state would otherwise inherit his property eventually, as
was right, but he wished to insure Celia's staying on as his
housekeeper, in which capacity she beggared superlatives.

While four huskies furnished by the undertaker replaced the granite
sheet over the brick chamber, Old Chauncey recollected the particulars
of a certain fit of Shep's, dating about five years before, shortly
before Celia. That catalepsy, or whatever it was, had gripped Shep as
though in death for nearly three days until Old Chauncey had thought of
making a brassy rumpus next to his ear with the big dinner bell. The
alarm clock in the subterranean mausoleum was set for eleven o'clock,
terminating a like period of time, when Old Shep might be expected to
wake up and yawn in the hereafter. Just a whim of Chauncey's, since the
coroner had pronounced Old Shep indisputably defunct.

Late that night Celia surmised worriedly that her absent husband might
be visiting the tomb of his lifelong crony, and there he was in the
sickly forest of tombstones, hunkering down on Shep's horizontal
tombstone like a boy watching a game of marbles.

But he was listening, not watching. He knocked again on the slab with
his bony knuckles, cocked his head. Listening for the response while the
lazy b