interment
within the boundary of those two parishes, that fact will be taken by
the Court as proof that no such interment has taken place, and that
therefore the body must have been deposited elsewhere. Such a decision
would constitute George Hurst the co-executor and residuary legatee."

"That is cheerful for your friends, Berkeley," Jervis remarked, "for we
may take it as pretty certain that the body has not been deposited in
any of the places named."

"Yes," I agreed gloomily, "I'm afraid there is very little doubt of
that. But what an ass the fellow must have been to make such a to-do
about his beastly carcass? What the deuce could it have mattered to him
where it was dumped, when he had done with it?"

Thorndyke chuckled softly. "Thus the irreverent youth of to-day," said
he. "But yours is hardly a fair comment, Berkeley. Our training makes us
materialists, and puts us a little out of sympathy with those in whom
primitive beliefs and emotions survive. A worthy priest who came to look
at our dissecting-room expressed surprise to me that students, thus
constantly in the presence of relics of mortality, should be able to
think of anything but the resurrection and the life hereafter. He was a
bad psychologist. There is nothing so dead as a dissecting-room
'subject'; and the contemplation of the human body in the process of
being quietly taken to pieces--being resolved into its structural units
like a worn-out clock or an old engine in the Mr. Rapper's yard--is
certainly not conducive to a vivid realisation of the doctrine of the
resurrection."

"No; but this absurd anxiety to be buried in some particular place has
nothing to do with religious belief; it is mere silly sentiment."

"It is sentiment, I admit," said Thorndyke, "but I wouldn't call it
silly. The feeling is so widespread in time and space that we must look
on it with respect as something inherent in human nature. Think--as
doubtless John Bellingham did--of the ancient Egyptians, whose chief
aspiration was that of everlasting repose for the dead. See the trouble
they took to achieve it. Think of the Great Pyramid, or that of
Amenemhat the Fourth with its labyrinth of false passages and its sealed
and hidden sepulchral chamber. Think of Jacob, borne after death all
those hundreds of weary miles in order that he might sleep with his
fathers, and then remember Shakespeare and his solemn adjuration to
posterity to let him rest undisturbed in his grave. No, B