In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human. The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognisable; but that was not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten, the ventilating cloth, the hygienic flannel—everything down to the health boots from Messrs. Dall and Crumbie’s, identified the body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only the forage-cap must have been lost in the convulsion, for the dead man was bare-headed.
“The poor old beggar!” said John, with a touch of natural feeling; “I would give ten pounds if we hadn’t chivied him in the train!”
But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon the dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow marked with the stamp of tragic indignation and tragic intellectual effort, he stood there silent. Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
“Here!” he said suddenly, “take his heels, we must get him into the woods. I’m not going to have anybody find this.”
“O, fudge!” said John, “Where’s the use?”
“Do what I tell you,” spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by the shoulders. “Am I to carry him myself?”
They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve paces they were under cover; and a little farther back, in a sandy clearing of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and stood and looked at it with loathing.
“What do you mean to do?” whispered John.
“Bury him, to be sure!” responded Morris, and he opened his pocket-knife and began feverishly to dig.
“You’ll never make a hand of it with that,” objected the other.