to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion
that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the
corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a
murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the
station-master's as put out as never was."

Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest.
"What a tale, to be sure!"

"And then," added Peter's mother, growing more dramatic as the story
proceeded, "the station-master sends for the police, and the police
sends for the crowner, so as everything shall be decent and in order;
and they walks in a solemn procession--with two porters carrying a
shutter--to the carriage where Peter lies, all as grand and nice as if
it was a funeral."

"I never heard tell of such a thing in my life--never!"

"Then the station-master opens the door with one of them state keys
which always take such a long time to open a door which you could open
with your own hands in a trice--you know 'em by sight."

Mrs. Bateson nodded. Of course she knew them by sight; who does not?

"And then the crowner steps forward to take the handkerchief off the
face of the body, it being the perquisite of a crowner so to do," Mrs.
Hankey continued, with the maternal regret of a mother whose son has
been within an inch of fame, and missed it; "and just picture to
yourself the vexation of them all, when it was no murdered corpse they
found, but only our Peter with an attack of the toothache!"

"Well, I never! They must have been put about; as you would have been
yourself, Mrs. Hankey, if you'd found so little after expecting so
much."

"In course I should; it wasn't in flesh and blood not to be, and
station-master and crowner are but mortal, like the rest of us. I assure
you, when I first heard the story, I pitied them from the bottom of my
heart."

"And what became of Peter in the midst of it all, Mrs. Hankey?"

"Oh! it woke him up with a vengeance; and, of course, it flustered him a
good deal, when he rightly saw how matters stood, to have to make his
excuses to all them grand gentlemen for not being a murdered corpse. But
as I says to him afterward, he'd no one but himself to blame; first for
being so troublesome as to have the toothache, and then for being so
presumptuous as to try and cure it. And his father is just the same; if
you take your eye off him for a minute he is bound to be in some
mischief or another."

"There's no den