March. In like manner, he summoned three day-labourers whom he
pledged to secrecy, and engaged to meet him at the same place and at
the same hour, but singly and without lanterns. Attention should
not be attracted if he could help it.

"When the night came, he himself, with a trusty servant, proceeded
to the entrance of the Kassengewolbe. The four men were already
there. In darkness they all entered, raised the trap-door, adjusted
the ladder, and descended to the abode of the dead. Not till then
were lanterns lighted; it was just possible that some late wanderer
might, even at that hour, cross the churchyard. Schwabe seated
himself on a step of the ladder and directed the workmen. Fragments
of broken coffins they piled up in one corner, and bones in another.
Skulls as they were found were placed in a heap by themselves. The
work went on from twelve o'clock till about three, for three
successive nights, at the end of which time twenty-three skulls had
been found. These the Burgermeister caused to be put into a sack
and carried to his house, where he himself took them out and placed
them in rows on a table.

"It was hardly done ere he exclaimed, 'THAT must be Schiller's!'
There was one skull that differed enormously from all the rest, both
in size and in shape. It was remarkable, too, in another way:
alone of all those on the table it retained an entire set of the
finest teeth, and Schiller's teeth had been noted for their beauty.
But there were other means of identification at hand. Schwabe
possessed the cast of Schiller's head, taken after death by Klauer,
and with this he undertook to make a careful comparison and
measurement. The two seemed to him to correspond, and, of the
twenty-two others, not one would bear juxtaposition with the cast.