"One o' they what used to go about on Christmas Eve in the gude old days what be gone vor ever!" exclaimed the Yellow Leaf with great interest. "Not a mummer, but a body, a corpse--dried up and withered," explained the Captain. "Same as I be nearly," murmured the Yellow Leaf; while some of the women screamed and some giggled, one hoping the creature was quite dead, another dreadfully afraid there had been a murder, and a third trusting she wouldn't have to adorn some parlour when she was took. "Can he do anything, Captain--sing and dance, or tell ye what the weather's going to be?" asked Squinting Jack. "'Tis a matter of taste, but I couldn't fancy corpses as furniture," observed the Dumpy Philosopher. "What I ses is this," commented the Wallower in Wealth, "if I wur to dig bodies out of churchyard, and sell 'em to folk as genuine antiquities, I would have the policeman calling on me." "You mustn't dig up Christians--that's blasphemy," said the Captain. "This chap was a heathen king, one of the Pharaohs you read of in the Bible, and he died thousands of years ago. He may have known Jacob and Joseph--and I bought him for five bob." "Ain't that wonderful!" exclaimed a lady. "It do make they Children of Israel seem amazing real," admitted the Gentle Shepherd. "The remarkable object occupying the centre of the mantelpiece is a Russian Ikon. It used to hang upon the quarterdeck of a battleship which was lost in the Baltic," continued the Captain. "I suppose 'tis useful vor navigating purposes," suggested the Dumpy Philosopher. "It is what the Russians call a holy picture. They say their prayers to such things," shouted the Captain angrily. "A queer lot of old stuff here along," said the Gentle Shepherd. "A few articles are priceless," declared the proprietor. "These two vases, for instance. They were looted from the royal palace at Pekin by an English sailor lad who had intended them as a present for his sweetheart; but, as he couldn't carry them about, he sold them to me for ten shillings. An American gentleman offered me a hundred pounds for the pair, but I wouldn't part with them for five times that amount. These blue dragons are covered with a lustre known as glaze, which is now a lost art. This portfolio of pictures also comes from China: there are more than fifty, and each represents one of the various kinds of torture commonly practised by Chinese magistrates upon people who are brought before them, charged with such offences as forgetting to pay local rates or being polite to foreigners. Here is the usual punishment for omitting to lick the dust when a big-pot passes--being impaled upon three stakes above a slow fire without the option of a fine." "Nice pictures to look at on a Sunday evening," said Squinting Jack.