pon their backs. They must have thus examined forty
people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course
of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the
boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was
a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground,
especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here
a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place
where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers
after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth
his index with a tragic gesture. John followed the direction of his
brother's hand.

In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human.
The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable; 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
Dail 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 bareheaded.

'The poor old beggar!' said John, with a touch of natural feeling; 'I
would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivvied 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 further 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 b