"Indeed but it is, old fellow. But, there, I'll come in now and then and oil your works, and keep you going as long as I can." "Do, doctor, do, please. I shall feel so much safer when you've been." "All right. Good-day, Moredock." "Good-day, doctor," said the old man, gripping his visitor's arm tightly with a hook-like claw. "Good-day; and if you do overcome your scruples, I should like that skull. It would be useful to me now." The old man kept tightly hold of his visitor's arm, and hobbled to the door to look out, and then, still gripping hard at the arm, he said in a strange, cachinnatory way, as he laid down his pipe: "He-he-he! hi-hi-hi! I've got it for you, doctor." "What? The skull?" "Hush! Of course I have; only one must make a bit o' fuss over it. Sackerlidge and dessercation, you know." "Oh! I see." "I wouldn't do such a thing for any one but a doctor, you know. Anno Domical purposes, eh?" "You're getting the purpose mixed up with your disease, Moredock," said the doctor, as the old man took out a key from the pocket of his coat, and, after blowing in it and tapping it on the table, prior to drawing a pin from the edge of his waistcoat and treating the key as if it were a periwinkle, he crossed to the old oak coffer. "Just shut that door, doctor," he said. "That's right. Now shove the bolt. Nobody aren't likely to come unless Dally Watlock does, for she always runs over when she aren't wanted, and stops away when she is. Thankye, doctor." He stooped down, looking like some curious old half-bald bird, to unlock the chest, and then, after raising the lid a short distance, in a cunningly secretive way, he thrust in one arm, and brought out a dark-looking human skull. "Ha! yes," cried the doctor, taking the grisly relic of mortality in his hands. "Yes, that's a very perfect specimen; but it's a woman's, evidently. I wanted a man's." "You said sell you a skull," said the old man angrily. "You never said nowt about man or woman." "No. It was an oversight. There, never mind." "Ay, but I do mind," grumbled the old man. "I like to sadersfy my customers. Give it me back." "But this will do." "Nay, nay, nay; it won't do," cried the old man peevishly. "Give it to me." The doctor handed back the skull, and the old man hastily replaced it in the coffer, hesitated a few moments, and then brought out another skull. "Ah! that's right," cried the doctor eagerly; "the very thing. How much?" "Nay, nay, nay; I'm not going to commit sackerlidge and dessercation. I can't sell it." "But you are not going to give it to me?" "Nay; I only thought as you might put anything you like on the chimbley-piece." "I see," said the doctor, smiling, and placing a small gold coin there, the old man watching eagerly the while. "But I say, Moredock, how many more have you got in that chest?"