"Alas! my dear Mr. Smithers," returned the undertaker, shaking his head in a lachrymose manner, "if men will perpetrate such enormities, they must expect to go to their last home by means of a dance upon nothing." And, according to a custom which years had rendered a part of Mr. Banks's nature, he wiped his eyes with a dingy white pocket-handkerchief. "There he is again, the old fool!" ejaculated Smithers, with a coarse guffaw; "always a-whimpering! Why, you don't mean to say, Banks, that you care two straws about the feller that's going to be tucked up this morning?" "Ah! Smithers, you don't know my heart: I weeps for frail human natur', and not only for the unhappy being that's so soon to be a blessed defunct carkiss. But, Smithers—my boy——" "Well?" cried the executioner. "How much is it to be this time for the rope?" asked Mr. Banks, in a tremulous tone and with another solemn shake of the head. "Five shillings—not a mag under," was the prompt reply. "That's too much, Mr. Smithers—too much," observed the undertaker of Globe Lane. "The last one I bought I lost by: times is changed, Mr. Smithers—sadly changed." "Ain't the _morbid feelings_, as the press calls 'em, as powerful as ever?" demanded the executioner savagely. "The morbid feelings, thank God, is right as a trivet," answered Banks; "but it's the blunt that falls off, Smithers—the blunt! And what's the use of the morbid feelings if there's no blunt to gratify 'em?" "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Banks," cried the executioner, "that you can't get as ready a sale for the halters as you used to do?" "I'm afraid that such is the actiwal case, my dear friend," responded Mr. Banks, turning up his eyes in a melancholy manner. "The last blessed wictim that you operated on, Mr. Smithers, you remember, I gived you five shillings for the rope; and I will say, in justice to him as spun it and them as bought it, that a nicer, stronger, or compacter bit of cord never supported carkiss to cross-beam. But wain was it that I coiled it neat up in my winder;—wain was it that I wrote on a half sheet of foolscap, '_This is the halter that hung poor William Lees_;'—the morbid feelings was strong, 'cos the crowd collected opposite my house; but the filthy lucre, Smithers, was wanting. Well—there the damned—I beg its pardon—the blessed cord stayed for a matter of three weeks; and I do believe it never would have gone at all, if some swell that was passing quite promiscuously one day didn't take a fancy to it——" "Well, and what did he give you?" demanded the executioner impatiently. "Only twelve shillings, as true as I'm a woful sinner that hopes to be saved!" answered the undertaker. "Twelve shillings—eh? And how much would you have had for the rope?" "When the blunt doesn't fall short of the morbid feelings, I calkilates upon a guinea," answered Mr. Banks.