“I too have come provided,” said the doctor, taking sundry implements from his black bag. “Now, Moredock, I want everything to remain here night after night, just as I leave it, ready for me when I come again.”
“Come again?” growled the sexton.
“What, shan’t you finish to-night?”
“Perhaps not this month,” was the stern answer.
Moredock stared. “Why, you—”
“Hush!” said the doctor sternly. “Now, what are you going to do—stay and assist me, or go? If you have the slightest nervous dread, pray leave me at once.”
“Nay, I’m not skeared, doctor,” said the old man grimly. “I’ve seen too much o’ this sort o’ thing. I was a bit frightened when I saw that head going along through the church without the body, but I’m not feared of this.”
“Stop, then, and help,” said the doctor. “I’ll pay you well. Can you use a screw-driver?”
Moredock chuckled and took off his coat, which he hung upon one of the ornamental handles of an old coffin foot. Then rolling up his shirt-sleeves over his thin, sinewy arms, he took up a screw-driver—one that he had brought—and as deftly as a carpenter began removing the screws from the handsome coffin-lid.
As Moredock attacked the head, the doctor busied himself at the foot, with the result that in a few minutes the screws were all laid together upon the stone ledge at the side of the vault, and the coffin-lid, with its engraved breast-plate, setting forth the name, age, and date, was lifted up, and stood on end out of the way.