arfare the parochial staff was, lifted him bodily from
the ground, and canted him over the wall, without much regard to whether
he fell on a hard or a soft place on the other side.

This feat accomplished, no further attention was paid to Mr. Leigh, who,
finding that his exhortations were quite unheeded, retired into the
church with an appearance of deep affliction about him, and locked
himself in the vestry.

The crowd now had entire possession--without even the sort of control
that an exhortation assumed over them--of the burying-ground, and soon
in a dense mass were these desperate and excited people collected round
the well-known spot where lay the mortal remains of Miles, the butcher.

"Silence!" cried a loud voice, and every one obeyed the mandate, looking
towards the speaker, who was a tall, gaunt-looking man, attired in a
suit of faded black, and who now pressed forward to the front of the
throng.

"Oh!" cried one, "it's Fletcher, the ranter. What does he do here?"

"Hear him! hear him!" cried others; "he won't stop us."

"Yes, hear him," cried the tall man, waving his arms about like the
sails of a windmill. "Yes, hear him. Sons of darkness, you're all
vampyres, and are continually sucking the life-blood from each other. No
wonder that the evil one has power over you all. You're as men who walk
in the darkness when the sunlight invites you, and you listen to the
words of humanity when those of a diviner origin are offered to your
acceptance. But there shall be miracles in the land, and even in this
place, set apart with a pretended piety that is in itself most damnable,
you shall find an evidence of the true light; and the proof that those
who will follow me the true path to glory shall be found here within
this grave. Dig up Miles, the butcher!"

"Hear, hear, hear, hurra!" said every body. "Mr. Fletcher's not such a
fool, after all. He means well."

"Yes, you sinners," said the ranter, "and if you find Miles, the
butcher, decaying--even as men are expected to decay whose mortal
tabernacles are placed within the bowels of the earth--you shall gather
from that a great omen, and a sign that if you follow me you seek the
Lord; but I you find him looking fresh and healthy, as if the warm blood
was still within his veins, you shall take that likewise as a
signification that what I say to you shall be as the Gospel, and that by
coming to the chapel of the Little Boozlehum, ye shall achieve a great
salvation.