IN removes certain artfully placed
stones and rubbish, and lifts a clumsy extemporized trap-door. Below
appears a ricketty old step-ladder leading into darkness.

"I heard such cries and groans down there, last Christmas Eve, as
sounded worse than the Latin singing in the Ritualistic church,"
observes McLAUGHLIN.

"Cries and groans!" echoes Mr. BUMSTEAD, turning quite pale, and
momentarily forgetting the snakes which he is just beginning to discover
among the stones. "You're getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need
some more West Indian cough-mixture.--Wait until I see for myself
whether it's got enough sugar in it."

In due time the great nervous antidote is passed and replaced, and then,
with the lighted lanterns worked around under their arms, they go down
the tottering ladder. Down they go into a great, damp, musty cavern, to
which their lights give a pallid illumination.

"See here," says OLD MORTARITY, raising a long, curved bone from the
floor. "Look at that: shoulder-blade of unmarried Episcopal lady, aged
thirty-nine."

"How do you know she was so old, and unmarried?" asks the organist.

"Because the shoulder-blade's so sharp."

Mr. Bumstead is surprised at this specimen of the art of an AGASSIZ and
WATERHOUSE HAWKINS in such a mortary old man, and his intellectual pride
causes him to resolve at once upon a rival display.

"Look at this skull, JOHN McLAUGHLIN," he says, referring to an object
that he has found behind the ladder. "See thish fine, retreating brow,
bulging chin, projecting occipital bone, and these orifices of ears that
musht've been stupen'sly long. It's the skull, JOHN McLAUGHLIN, of a
twin-brother of the man who really wished--really wished, JOHN
McLAUGHLIN--that he could be sat'shfied, sir, in his own mind, that
CHARLES DICKENS was a Christian writer."

"Why, thash's skull of a hog," explains Mr. McLAUGHLIN, with some
contempt.

"Twin-brother--all th'shame," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, as though that made no
earthly difference.

Once more, what a strange expedition is this! How strangely the eyes of
the two men look, after two or three more applications to the antique
flask; and how curiously Mr. Bumstead walks on tip-toe at times and
takes short leaps now and then.

"Lesh go now," says BUMSTEAD, after both have been asleep upon their feet
several times; "I think th's snakes down here, JOHN McBUMSTEAD."

"Wh'st! monkies, you mean,--dozens of black monkies, Mr. BUMPLIN,"
whispers OLD