"Will it?" said the sexton, "well, you know best; but I should like to see a bit more of your face," and as he spoke, the old man suddenly raised his lantern towards the stranger, and then burst out into a laugh, "ay, I thought I knew the voice!" he said, "and so you've come back again, captain? Well now, this is droll enough! That bone you've got your foot upon belongs to your old wet-nurse, Sally Loames, if I know this ground; and she had as great a hand in damaging you as any of the rest. She was a bad one! But what has brought you down now that all the money's gone and the property too?" "Why, I'll tell you," answered Captain Moreton, "I'll tell you, my good old Grindley. I want to see into the vault where the coffins are, and just to have a look at the register. Can't you help me? you used always to have the keys." "No, no, captain," rejoined the sexton, shaking his head, "no tricks! no tricks! I'm not going to put my head into a noose for nothing." "Nobody wants you to put your head in a noose, Grindley," answered the other, "all I want is just to take a look at the coffins for a minute, and another at the register, for I have had a hint that I have been terribly cheated, and that people have put my great-grandfather's death six years too early, which makes all the difference to me; for if my mother was born while he was living she could not break the entail, do you see?" "Well, then," said the sexton, "you can come to-morrow, captain; and I'll tell the doctor any hour you like." "That won't do, Grindley," replied Moreton, "the parson is with the enemy; and, besides, I must not let any body know that I have seen the register and the coffins till I have every thing prepared to upset their roguery. You would not have me lose my own, would you, old boy? Then as to your doing it for nothing, if you will swear not to tell that I have seen the things at all, till I am ready and give you leave, you shall have a ten-pound note." It is a strange and terrible thing, that the value of that which has no value except as it affects us in this world and this life, increases enormously in our eyes as we are leaving it. The sexton had always been more or less a covetous man, as Captain Moreton well knew; but the passion had increased upon him with years, and the bait of the ten-pound note was not to be resisted. He took up the lantern, he got out of the grave, and looked carefully round. It was late at night--all was quiet--nothing seemed stirring; and approaching close to Moreton's side, he said in a whisper, "No one knows that you were coming here, eh, captain?" "Nobody in the world," replied the other, "I called at your house an hour ago, and the girl told me you were down here, but I said I would call on you again to-morrow." "And you only want to look at the coffins and the book?" continued the sexton. "Nothing else in the world," said Moreton, in an easy tone; "perhaps I may take a memorandum in my pocket-book, that's all."