th a ghastly grin.
'We'll get the job done on Wednesday.'

'She didn't want to give it to me, at first,' Crass concluded, 'but I
told 'er we'd see 'er right if old Snatchum tried to make 'er pay for
the other coffin.'

'I don't think he's likely to make much fuss about it,' said Hunter.
'He won't want everybody to know he was so anxious for the job.'

Crass and Sawkins pushed the handcart over to the other side of the
road and then, lifting the coffin off, they carried it into the house,
Nimrod going first.

The old woman was waiting for them with the candle at the end of the
passage.

'I shall be very glad when it's all over,' she said, as she led the way
up the narrow stairs, closely followed by Hunter, who carried the
tressels, Crass and Sawkins, bringing up the rear with the coffin. 'I
shall be very glad when it's all over, for I'm sick and tired of
answerin' the door to undertakers. If there's been one 'ere since
Friday there's been a dozen, all after the job, not to mention all the
cards what's been put under the door, besides the one's what I've had
give to me by different people. I had a pair of boots bein' mended and
the man took the trouble to bring 'em 'ome when they was finished--a
thing 'e's never done before--just for an excuse to give me an
undertaker's card.

'Then the milkman brought one, and so did the baker, and the
greengrocer give me another when I went in there on Saturday to buy
some vegetables for Sunday dinner.'

Arrived at the top landing the old woman opened a door and entered a
small and wretchedly furnished room.

Across the lower sash of the window hung a tattered piece of lace
curtain. The low ceiling was cracked and discoloured.

There was a rickety little wooden washstand, and along one side of the
room a narrow bed covered with a ragged grey quilt, on which lay a
bundle containing the clothes that the dead man was wearing at the time
of the accident.

There was a little table in front of the window, with a small
looking-glass upon it, and a cane-seated chair was placed by the
bedside and the floor was covered with a faded piece of drab-coloured
carpet of no perceptible pattern, worn into holes in several places.

In the middle of this dreary room, upon a pair of tressels, was the
coffin containing Philpot's body. Seen by the dim and flickering light
of the candle, the aspect of this coffin, covered over with a white
sheet, was terrible in its silent, pathetic solitud