stones and rubbish, and lifts a clumsy extemporized trap-door. Below
appears a ricketty old step-ladder leading into darkness.

"I heard such cries and groans down there, last Christmas Eve, as
sounded worse than the Latin singing in the Ritualistic church,"
observes McLAUGHLIN.

"Cries and groans!" echoes Mr. BUMSTEAD, turning quite pale, and
momentarily forgetting the snakes which he is just beginning to discover
among the stones. "You're getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need
some more West Indian cough-mixture.--Wait until I see for myself
whether it's got enough sugar in it."

In due time the great nervous antidote is passed and replaced, and then,
with the lighted lanterns worked around under their arms, they go down
the tottering ladder. Down they go into a great, damp, musty cavern, to
which their lights give a pallid illumination.

"See here," says OLD MORTARITY, raising a long, curved bone from the
floor. "Look at that: shoulder-blade of unmarried Episcopal lady, aged
thirty-nine."

"How do you know she was so old, and unmarried?" asks the organist.

"Because the shoulder-blade's so sharp."

Mr. Bumstead is surprised at this specimen of the art of an AGASSIZ and
WATERHOUSE HAWKINS in such a mortary old man, and his intellectual pride
causes him to resolve at once upon a rival display.