onounce hard words as
well as other people; "if you have an _obtuse_ reason, that alters the
case."

So saying he lead the way to the bone-house, from which he began to
throw out various bones and skulls of more than common dimensions, and
amongst them a skull of very extraordinary magnitude, which he swore
by St David was the skull of Cadwallader.

"How do you know this to be his skull?" said Mr Escot.

"He was the piggest man that ever lived, and he was puried here; and
this is the piggest skull I ever found: you see now----"

"Nothing can be more logical," said Mr Escot. "My good friend will you
allow me to take this skull away with me?"

"St Winifred pless us!" exclaimed the sexton, "would you have me
haunted py his chost for taking his plessed pones out of consecrated
cround? Would you have him come in the tead of the night, and fly away
with the roof of my house? Would you have all the crop of my carden
come to nothing? for, look you, his epitaph says,

"He that my pones shall ill pestow,
Leek in his cround shall never crow."

"You will ill bestow them," said Mr Escot, "in confounding them with
those of the sons of little men, the degenerate dwarfs of later
generations; you will well bestow them in giving them to me: for I
will have this illustrious skull bound with a silver rim, and filled
with mantling wine, with this inscription, NUNC TANDEM: signifying
that that pernicious liquor has at length found its proper receptacle;
for, when the wine is in, the brain is out."

Saying these words, he put a dollar into the hands of the sexton, who
instantly stood spellbound by the talismanic influence of the coin,
while Mr Escot walked off in triumph with the skull of Cadwallader.

CHAPTER X
The Skull

When Mr Escot entered the breakfast-room he found the majority of the
party assembled, and the little butler very active at his station.
Several of the ladies shrieked at the sight of the skull; and Miss
Tenorina, starting up in great haste and terror, caused the subversion
of a cup of chocolate, which a servant was handing to the Reverend
Doctor Gaster, into the nape of the neck of Sir Patrick O'Prism. Sir
Patrick, rising impetuously, _to clap an extinguisher_, as he
expressed himself, _on the farthing rushlight of the rascal's life_,
pushed over the chair of Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, who, catching
for support at the first thing that came in his way, which happened
unluckily to be