"They drinks it, doctor, the idiots, and all the time they say it's horrid to eat a bit o' churchyard mutton. Squire Luke didn't care, though. He wouldn't have said no to a bit o' mutton 'cause it was pastured in the churchyard. But he has to send they sheep right t'other side o' the county to sell 'em. Folks 'bout here wouldn't touch a bit o' churchyard mutton. Such stuff! Keeps the graves nibbled off clean and neat. Don't hurt they. Mutton's sweet enough, and so they goes on drinking the water all round the yard, as is piled up with dead folk as I've buried, and my father and grandfather before me. Ay, they drinks the water, but wouldn't touch the mutton; they'd rather starve. Damp churchyard; and squire 'll lay snug on his dry shelf, and me--some day-- in the cold, wet ground." "It all comes to the same thing, Moredock," said the doctor, rousing himself. "May be, doctor: may be as you're right," said the old man, shaking his head solemnly--"`Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;' but there's a deal o' differ, and it takes a deal longer to come to that. I say, doctor, 'member what I said to you 'bout squire drinking himself to death?" said the old man, stooping to pick up a crowbar that he had let fall a few minutes before. "Yes," said North, gazing thoughtfully at the old man, and hardly realising what he said. "More strange things happen than what I told you. I knowed it wouldn't be long before he drank himself to death." "The squire died from an accident, Moredock," said the doctor sternly. "Ay, but what made the accident?" said the old man, with a chuckle. "Was it steps, was it bottles, was it corks? Nay, it were something inside the bottle. Drop o' brandy's good, but when you gets too much, it's poison." The doctor did not speak, only stood just inside the chancel door, gazing fixedly at the old man, with his thoughts wandering from the mausoleum built by the vestry, to the squire's remains lying up at the Hall, and his strange schemes, by which humanity might, perhaps, be spared much pain and care. "I've took the last o' that there physic, doctor." "Perhaps be of incalculable benefit to coming generations," mused the doctor, as he went on dreaming, standing there with one hand resting on the tomb rail, and seeming to look through the present in the shape of the crabbed and gnarled old sexton to a future where all was health and strength. "It was rare stuff, doctor," continued old Moredock, with a chuckle, as he glanced sidewise at the dreaming man. "Mussy me! a drop o' that allus seemed to make my toes tingle, and it went right up into the roots of my hair." "Why not--why not try?" It seemed a great experiment, but how little as compared with what had been done of old! "Why not--why not try?" "You'll let me have another bottle, doctor. It does me a sight of good." "I must. It seems like fate urging me on. It is for her--to do something to distinguish myself. Here is the opportunity, and I hesitate."