Dick’s astonishment was so intense that his eyes and mouth kept opening together to such an extent, that it seemed doubtful when they would reach their extreme point of elongation.  He then took up the brick and looked at it curiously, and turned it over and over, examined the ends and the sides with a critical eye, and at length he said,—­

“Well, I’m blowed, here’s a transmogrification; he’s consolidified himself into a blessed brick—­my eye, here’s a curiosity.”

“But you don’t mean to say that’s the butcher, Dick?” said the boy.

Dick reached over, and gave him a tap on the head with the brick.

“There!” he said, “that’s what I calls occular demonstration.  Do you believe it now, you blessed infidel?  What’s more natural?  He was an out-and-out brick while he was alive; and he’s turned to a brick now he’s dead.”

“Give it to me, Dick,” said the boy; “I should like to have that brick, just for the fun of the thing.”

“I’ll see you turned into a pantile first.  I sha’n’t part with this here, it looks so blessed sensible; it’s a gaining on me every minute as a most remarkable likeness, d——­d if it ain’t.”

By this time the bewilderment of the mob had subsided; now that there was no dead butcher to look upon, they fancied themselves most grievously injured; and, somehow or other, Dick, notwithstanding all his exertions in their service, was looked upon in the light of a showman, who had promised some startling exhibition and then had disappointed his auditors.

The first intimation he had of popular vengeance was a stone thrown at him, but Dick’s eye happened to be upon the fellow who threw it, and collaring him in a moment, he dealt him a cuff on the side of the head, which confused his faculties for a week.

“Hark ye,” he then cried, with a loud voice, “don’t interfere with me; you know it won’t go down.  There’s something wrong here; and, as one of yourselves, I’m as much interested in finding out what it is as any of you can possibly be.  There seems to be some truth in this vampyre business; our old friend, the butcher, you see, is not in his grave; where is he then?”

The mob looked at each other, and none attempted to answer the question.

“Why, of course, he’s a vampyre,” said Dick, “and you may all of you expect to see him, in turn, come into your bed-room windows with a burst, and lay hold of you like a million and a half of leeches rolled into one.”

There was a general expression of horror, and then Dick continued,—­

“You’d better all of you go home; I shall have no hand in pulling up any more of the coffins—­this is a dose for me.  Of course you can do what you like.”

[Illustration]

“Pull them all up!” cried a voice; “pull them all up!  Let’s see how many vampyres there are in the churchyard.”

“Well, it’s no business of mine,” said Dick; “but I wouldn’t, if I was you.”