dead several years. I attended him in his last illness. He was

buried in London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields.

His unpopularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment

prevented my following his remains, but I helped to lay him in his

coffin.”

Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most

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remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he

discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and

stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher’s head.

“Let us be reasonable,” said the spy, “and let us be fair. To

show you how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded

assumption yours is, I will lay before you a certificate of Cly’s

burial, which I happen to have carried in my pocket-book,” with a

hurried hand he produced and opened it, “ever since. There it is.

Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take it in your hand; it’s no

forgery.”

Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate,

and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not

have been more violently on end, if it had been that moment

dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack

built.

Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched

him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.

“That there Roger Cly, master,” said Mr. Cruncher, with a

taciturn and iron-bound visage. “So you put him in his coffin?”

“I did.”

“Who took him out of it?”

Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered. “What do you

mean?”

“I mean,” said Mr. Cruncher, “that he warn’t never in it. No!

Not he! I’ll have my head took off, if he was ever in it.”

The spy looked around at the two gentlemen; they both looked

in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.

“I tell you,” said Jerry, “that you buried paving-stones and

earth in that there coffin. Don’t go and tell me that you buried Cly.

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It was a take-in. Me and two more knows it.”

“How do you know it?”

“What’s that to you? Ecod!” growled Mr. Cruncher, “it’s you I

have got an old grudge agin, is it, with your shameful impositions

upon tradesmen! I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for

half a guinea.”

Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in

amazement at this turn of the business, here requested Mr.

Cruncher to moderate and explain himself.

“At another time, sir,” he returned, evasively, “the present time

is ill-conwenient for explainin’. What I stand to, is that he knows

well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say

he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I’ll either catch