really
convenient in the days of the resurrection men. Your material would
have been delivered at your very door. Was it a large school?"

"The attendance varied according to the time of the year. Sometimes I
worked there quite alone. I used to let myself in with a key and hoist
my subject out of a sort of sepulchral tank by means of a chain tackle.
It was a ghoulish business. You have no idea how awful the body used
to look to my unaccustomed eyes, as it rose slowly out of the tank. It
was like the resurrection scene that you see on some old tombstones,
where the deceased is shown rising out of his coffin while the
skeleton, Death, falls vanquished with his dart shattered and his crown
toppling off.

"I remember, too, that the demonstrator used to wear a blue apron,
which created a sort of impression of a cannibal butcher's shop. But I
am afraid I am shocking you."

"No you are not. Every profession has its unpresentable aspects, which
ought not to be seen by outsiders. Think of the sculptor's studio and
of the sculptor himself when he is modeling a large figure or a group
in clay. He might be a bricklayer or a roadsweeper if you judge by his
appearance. This is the tomb I was telling you about."

We halted before the plain coffer of stone, weathered and wasted by
age, but yet kept in decent repair by some pious hands, and read the
inscription, setting forth with modest pride, that here reposed Anna,
sixth daughter of Richard Cromwell, "The Protector." It was a simple
monument and commonplace enough, with the crude severity of the ascetic
age to which it belonged. But still, it carried the mind back to those
stirring times when the leafy shades of Gray's Inn Lane must have
resounded with the clank of weapons and the tramp of armed men; when
this bald recreation-ground was a rustic churchyard, standing amidst
green fields and hedgerows, and countrymen leading their pack-horses
into London through the Lane would stop to look in over the wooden gate.

Miss Bellingham looked at me critically as I stood thus reflecting, and
presently remarked: "I think you and I have a good many mental habits
in common."

I looked up inquiringly, and she continued: "I notice that an old
tombstone seems to set you meditating. So it does me. When I look at
an ancient monument, and especially an old headstone, I find myself
almost unconsciously retracing the years to the date that is written on
the stone. Why do you thin