To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs.  They must have thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph.  But now the course of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour.  It was a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party.  The ground, especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities—­here a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze.  It was a place where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers after game.  Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth his index with a tragic gesture.  John followed the direction of his brother’s hand.

In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human.  The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable; but that was not required.  The snowy hair, the coat of marten, the ventilating cloth, the hygienic flannel—­everything down to the health boots from Messrs Dail and Crumbie’s, identified the body as that of Uncle Joseph.  Only the forage cap must have been lost in the convulsion, for the dead man was bareheaded.

‘The poor old beggar!’ said John, with a touch of natural feeling; ’I would give ten pounds if we hadn’t chivvied him in the train!’

But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon the dead.  Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow marked with the stamp of tragic indignation and tragic intellectual effort, he stood there silent.  Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!

‘Here!’ he said suddenly, ’take his heels, we must get him into the woods.  I’m not going to have anybody find this.’

‘O, fudge!’ said John, ‘where’s the use?’

‘Do what I tell you,’ spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by the shoulders.  ‘Am I to carry him myself?’

They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve paces they were under cover; and a little further back, in a sandy clearing of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and stood and looked at it with loathing.

‘What do you mean to do?’ whispered John.

‘Bury him, to be sure,’ responded Morris, and he opened his pocket-knife and began feverishly to dig.

‘You’ll never make a hand of it with that,’ objected the other.

‘If you won’t help me, you cowardly shirk,’ screamed Morris, ’you can go to the devil!’

‘It’s the childishest folly,’ said John; ’but no man shall call me a coward,’ and he began to help his brother grudgingly.