iver shuddered as he cast his eyes toward the place, and crept
involuntarily closer to his master; for though it was covered up, the
boy felt that it was a corpse.

The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly;
his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled; her two
remaining teeth protruded over her under lip; and her eyes were bright
and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man.
They seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.

'Nobody shall go near her,' said the man, starting fiercely up, as the
undertaker approached the recess. 'Keep back! Damn you, keep back, if
you've a life to lose!'

'Nonsense, my good man,' said the undertaker, who was pretty well used
to misery in all its shapes. 'Nonsense!'

'I tell you,' said the man: clenching his hands, and stamping
furiously on the floor,--'I tell you I won't have her put into the
ground. She couldn't rest there. The worms would worry her--not eat
her--she is so worn away.'

The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but producing a tape
from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.

'Ah!' said the man: bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at
the feet of the dead woman; 'kneel down, kneel down--kneel round her,
every one of you, and mark my words! I say she was starved to death.
I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her; and then
her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor
candle; she died in the dark--in the dark! She couldn't even see her
children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged
for her in the streets: and they sent me to prison. When I came back,
she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they
starved her to death. I swear it before the God that saw it! They
starved her!' He twined his hands in his hair; and, with a loud
scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor: his eyes fixed, and the foam
covering his lips.

The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had
hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that
passed, menaced them into silence. Having unloosened the cravat of the
man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered towards the
undertaker.

'She was my daughter,' said the old woman, nodding her head in the
direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more
ghastly than even the presence of deat