But such is popularity!

“Well, if nobody won’t open the coffin,” said big Dick, “I will, so here goes.  I knowed the old fellow when he was alive, and many a time he’s d——­d me and I’ve d——­d him, so I ain’t a-going to be afraid of him now he’s dead.  We was very intimate, you see, ’cos we was the two heaviest men in the parish; there’s a reason for everything.”

“Ah, Dick’s the fellow to do it,” cried a number of persons; “there’s nobody like Dick for opening a coffin; he’s the man as don’t care for nothing.”

“Ah, you snivelling curs,” said Dick, “I hate you.  If it warn’t for my own satisfaction, and all for to prove that my old friend, the butcher, as weighed seventeen stone, and stood six feet two and-a-half on his own sole, I’d see you all jolly well—­”

“D——­d first,” said the boy; “open the lid, Dick, let’s have a look.”

“Ah, you’re a rum un,” said Dick, “arter my own heart.  I sometimes thinks as you must be a nevy, or some sort of relation of mine.  Howsomdever, here goes.  Who’d a thought that I should ever had a look at old fat and thunder again?—­that’s what I used to call him; and then he used to request me to go down below, where I needn’t turn round to light my blessed pipe.”

“Hell—­we know,” said the boy; “why don’t you open the lid, Dick?”

“I’m a going,” said Dick; “kim up.”

He introduced the corner of a shovel between the lid and the coffin, and giving it a sudden wrench, he loosened it all down one side.

A shudder pervaded the multitude, and, popularly speaking, you might have heard a pin drop in that crowded churchyard at that eventful moment.

Dick then proceeded to the other side, and executed the same manoeuvre.

“Now for it,” he said; “we shall see him in a moment, and we’ll think we seed him still.”

“What a lark!” said the boy.

“You hold yer jaw, will yer?  Who axed you for a remark, blow yer?  What do you mean by squatting down there, like a cock-sparrow, with a pain in his tail, hanging yer head, too, right over the coffin?  Did you never hear of what they call a fluvifium coming from the dead, yer ignorant beast, as is enough to send nobody to blazes in a minute?  Get out of the way of the cold meat, will yer?”

“A what, do you say, Dick?”

“Request information from the extreme point of my elbow.”

Dick threw down the spade, and laying hold of the coffin-lid with both hands, he lifted it off, and flung it on one side.

There was a visible movement and an exclamation among the multitude.  Some were pushed down, in the eager desire of those behind to obtain a sight of the ghastly remains of the butcher; those at a distance were frantic, and the excitement was momentarily increasing.

They might all have spared themselves the trouble, for the coffin was empty—­here was no dead butcher, nor any evidence of one ever having been there, not even the grave-clothes; the only thing at all in the receptacle of the dead was a brick.