The room in which the coffins were stored was up one flight of stairs. No one saw him go up. He pushed the door open, and the pale moonlight streamed in on piles of coffins, some made of common pine and others of handsomely polished wood. These latter were the elegant caskets of the rich. Pieces of wood and carpenters' tools lay all about, but what arrested Tommy's attention was a white cloth. This was stretched over a plainly-made coffin. Actuated by an irresistible impulse, he approached and lifted the cloth. A convulsive shudder ran through his limbs. He had disclosed the pallid features of the dead boy, the poor unfortunate who had come to his untimely end through the thoughtless joke of his friends and himself. It was dreadful to have to sleep in the same room with the dead. "I'll put it out of sight," said he to himself. Lifting up the coffin containing the dead child, he hid it under the carpenter's bench. It was a cold night, and he kept the sheet. There was a boy's coffin on the floor, and he crept in. It just fitted him. Drawing the white cloth or sheet over himself, he soon fell asleep, in spite of the dismal and ghastly surroundings. An hour later Barker, the undertaker, entered. "I guess I'll just nail a lid over that 'stiff,'" he muttered. "I've known cats to come in here and gnaw the hands and faces. There'll be an inquest to-morrow, and it'll be best to have it look decent." Taking up a board, he placed it over the coffin in which Soft Tommy was sleeping. Then he drove in half a dozen long nails. The sound of the nailing roused Tommy, who tried to cry out, but the lid was so close to his face that he could not. He felt a sense of suffocation. In vain he endeavored to raise an alarm. A nameless horror took possession of him. It was worse than a nightmare, or anything that can be produced by physical suffering. It was the fear that he was going to be buried alive--that, in fact, he was already nailed up in his casket and on his way to the silent tomb. "That fixes it," he heard Mr. Barker say. "Now I'll go to bed." "Mr. Bar-Barker," Tommy strove to say, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. The words died on his lips. A dizziness came over him, his head seemed to swim, and he lost consciousness. The undertaker had nailed him in the coffin, and he was alone with the dead. * * * * * Charley Barker went to sleep, after leaving Tommy, but he woke up with a bad dream, in which he had fancied that his friend had fallen into a furnace and was rapidly being reduced to a cinder. He had witnessed the horrid scene distinctly in his dream, the boy's arms were outstretched as if begging help and protection, while his plaintive voice rang in his ears.