"Here, SMALLEY," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, as another stone, aimed at MCLAUGHLIN, strikes himself, "take this other penny, and aim at both of us."
Thus perfectly protected from painful contusion, although the air continues full of stones, Mr. BUMSTEAD takes JOHN MCLAUGHLIN'S arm, as they move onward, to protect the old man from harm, and is so careful to pick out the choice parts of the road for him that their progress is digressive in the extreme.
"I have heard," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, "that at one end of the pauper burial-ground there still remains the cellar of a former chapel to the Alms-House, and that you have broken through into it, and got a stepladder to go down. Isthashso?"
"Yes; and there's coffins down there."
"Yours is a hic-stremely strange life, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN."
"It's certainly a very damp one," says MCLAUGHLIN, silently urging his strange companion to support a little more of his own weight in walking. "But it has its science. Over in the Ritualistic burial-yard, I tap the wall of a vault with my trowel-handle, and if the sound is hollow I say to myself: 'Not full yet.' Say it's the First of May, and I tap a coffin, and don't hear anything more in it, I say: 'Either you're not a woman in there, or, if you are, you never kept house.'—Because, you see, if it was a woman that ever kept house, it would take but the least thing in the world to make her insist upon 'moving' on the First of May."
"Won'rful!" says Mr. BUMSTEAD. "Sometime when you're sober, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, I'll do a grave or two with you."
On their way they reach a bar-room, into which Mr. BUMSTEAD is anxious to take Old Mortarity, for the purpose of getting something to make the latter stronger for his remaining walk. Failing in his ardent entreaties to this end—even after desperately offering to eat a few cloves himself for the sake of company—he coldly bids the stone-cutter good-night, and starts haughtily in a series of spirals for his own home. Suddenly catching sight of SMALLEY in the distance, he furiously grasps a stone to throw at him; but, allowing his arm to describe too much of a circle before parting with the stone, the latter strikes the back of his own head, and he goes on, much confused.
Arriving in his own room, and arising from the all-fours attitude in which, from eccentricity, he has ascended the stairs, Mr. BUMSTEAD takes from a cupboard a curious, antique flask, and nearly fills a tumbler from its amber-hued contents. He drinks the potion with something like frenzy; then softly steals to the door of a room opening into his own, and looks in upon EDWIN DROOD. Calm and untroubled lies his nephew there, in pleasant dreams. "They are both asleep," whispers Mr. BUMSTEAD to himself. He goes back to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a chair caught in his coat-tail; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella over his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions.
CHAPTER VI.