s covered with the white
frost; and the goblin looked as if he had sat on the same tombstone very
comfortably, for two or three hundred years. He was sitting perfectly
still; his tongue was put out, as if in derision; and he was grinning at
Gabriel Grub with such a grin as only a goblin could call up.

'"It was NOT the echoes," said the goblin.

'Gabriel Grub was paralysed, and could make no reply.

'"What do you do here on Christmas Eve?" said the goblin sternly. '"I
came to dig a grave, Sir," stammered Gabriel Grub.

'"What man wanders among graves and churchyards on such a night as
this?" cried the goblin.

'"Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!" screamed a wild chorus of voices that
seemed to fill the churchyard. Gabriel looked fearfully round--nothing
was to be seen.

'"What have you got in that bottle?" said the goblin.

'"Hollands, sir," replied the sexton, trembling more than ever; for
he had bought it of the smugglers, and he thought that perhaps his
questioner might be in the excise department of the goblins.

'"Who drinks Hollands alone, and in a churchyard, on such a night as
this?" said the goblin.

'"Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!" exclaimed the wild voices again.

'The goblin leered maliciously at the terrified sexton, and then raising
his voice, exclaimed--

'"And who, then, is our fair and lawful prize?"

'To this inquiry the invisible chorus replied, in a strain that sounded
like the voices of many choristers singing to the mighty swell of the
old church organ--a strain that seemed borne to the sexton's ears upon
a wild wind, and to die away as it passed onward; but the burden of the
reply was still the same, "Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!"

'The goblin grinned a broader grin than before, as he said, "Well,
Gabriel, what do you say to this?"

'The sexton gasped for breath. '"What do you think of this, Gabriel?"
said the goblin, kicking up his feet in the air on either side of the
tombstone, and looking at the turned-up points with as much complacency
as if he had been contemplating the most fashionable pair of Wellingtons
in all Bond Street.

'"It's--it's--very curious, Sir," replied the sexton, half dead with
fright; "very curious, and very pretty, but I think I'll go back and
finish my work, Sir, if you please."

'"Work!" said the goblin, "what work?"

'"The grave, Sir; making the grave," stammered the sexton.

'"Oh, the grave, eh?" said the goblin; "who makes graves at a time when
all other