glimmered in the opening of the
window--something like a long bundle of linen, extruded inch by inch,
then lowered on to the penthouse roof and let slide slowly down towards
me.

"Got it?"

"Right." I steadied it a moment by its feet, then let it slide into my
arms, and lowered it on to the gravelled path. It was the body of John
Emmet, in his winding-sheet.

"Carry it into the shed," whispered the Vicar. "I must show Trudgeon
the coffin and hand him the keys. When I've got rid of him I'll come
round."

Somehow, the second time of handling it was far worse than the first.
The chill of the corpse seemed to strike through its linen wrappers.
But I lifted it inside, shut the door upon it, and stood wiping my
forehead, while the Vicar closed the window cautiously, drew the blind,
and pressed-to the clasp.

A minute later I heard him calling from the front, "Mr. Trudgeon--Mr.
Trudgeon"; and Trudgeon's hob-nailed boots ascending the steps.
Silence followed for many minutes: then a slant of candlelight faded off
the fuchsia-bush round the corner, and the two men stumbled down the
staircase--stood muttering on the doorstep while a key grated in the
lock--stumbled down the steps and stood muttering in the sunken roadway.
At length they said "Good-night" and parted. I listened while the sound
of their footsteps died away: Trudgeon's down the hill towards the
Porth, the Vicar's up towards the church-town.

After this I had some painful minutes. As they dragged by, an
abominable curiosity took hold of me, an itch to open the door of the
shed, strike a match, and have a look at the dead face I had never seen.
Then came into my mind a passage in the _Republic_ which I had read a
fortnight before--how that one Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up
one day from the Piraeus under the north wall of the city, observed some
corpses lying on the ground at the place of execution; and how he fought
between his desire to look and his abhorrence until at length, the
fascination mastering him, he forced his eyes open with his fingers and
ran up exclaiming, "Look, wretches, look! Feed your fill on the fair
sight!" . . . My seat was an inverted flower-pot, and clinging to it I
began to count. If the Vicar did not arrive before I reached five
hundred, why, then . . .

"_Hist!_" He had fetched his compass round by the back of the garden,
treading so softly that the signal sounded almost in my ear and fetched
me off my flower-pot