, I have thought a deal of this
thing--fast through life; but they dies, and nobody cares for them--you
see how they are buried.' I inquired if he knew all their names. He said
of course he did. If he didn't, nobody else would. In order to try him,
I desired he would show me the grave of Mag Munday. He shook his head
smiled, muttered the name incoherently, and said he thought it sounded
like a dead name. 'I'll get my thinking right,' he pursued, and
brightening up all at once, his vacant eyes flashed, then he touched me
cunningly on the arm, and with a wink and nod of the head there was no
mistaking, led the way to a great mound located in an obscure part of
the graveyard--"

"A great mound! I thought it would come to that," sighs Madame Montford,
impatiently.

"We bury these wretched creatures in an obscure place. Indeed, Madame, I
hold it unnecessary to have anything to distinguish them when once they
are dead. Well, this poor forlorn simpleton then sat down on a grave,
and bid me sit beside him. I did as he bid me, and soon he went into a
deep study, muttering the name of Mag Munday the while, until I thought
he never would stop. So wild and wandering did the poor fellow seem,
that I began to think it a pity we had not a place, an insane hospital,
or some sort of benevolent institution, where such poor creatures could
be placed and cared for. It would be much better than sending them to
the whipping-post--"

"I am indeed of your opinion--of your way of thinking most certainly,"
interpolates Madame Montford, a shadow of melancholy darkening her
countenance.

"At length, he went at it, and repeated over an infinite quantity of
names. It was wonderful to see how he could keep them all in his head.
'Well, now,' says he, turning to me with an inoffensive laugh, 'she
ben't dead. You may bet on that. There now!' he spoke, as if suddenly
becoming conscious of a recently-made discovery. 'Why, she runned wild
about here, as I does, for a time; was abused and knocked about by
everybody. Oh, she had a hard time enough, God knows that.' 'But that is
not disclosing to me what became of her,' says I; 'come, be serious,
Graves.' (We call him this, you see, Madame, for the reason that he is
always among graveyards.) Then he went into a singing mood, sang two
plaintive songs, and had sung a third and fourth, if I had not stopped
him. 'Well,' he says, 'that woman ain't dead, for I've called up in my
mind the whole graveyard of nam