I had just crossed the long bridge leading from Boston to Cambridgeport, and was plodding my dusty way on foot through that not very agreeable suburb, on a sultry afternoon in July, with a very creditable thunder-cloud coming up in my rear, when a stout elderly gentleman, with a mulberry face, a brown coat, and pepper-and-salt smalls, reined up his nag, and after learning that I was bound for Old Cambridge, politely invited me to take a seat beside him in the little sort of tax-cart he was driving. Nothing loth, I consented, and we were soon _en route_. The mare he drove was a very peculiar animal. She had few good points to the eye, being heavy-bodied, hammer-headed, thin in the shoulders, bald-faced, and rejoicing in a little stump of a tail which was almost entirely innocent of hair. But there were “lots of muscle,” as Major Longbow says, in her hind quarters. “She aint no Wenus, Sir,” said my new acquaintance, pointing with his whip to the object of my scrutiny—“but handsome is as handsome does. Them’s my sentiments. She’s a rum ’un to look at, but a good ’un to go.” “Indeed?” “Yes, _Sir_! That there mare, Sir, has made good time—I may say, _very_ good time before the hearse.” “Before the hearse?” “Before the hearse! S’pose you never heard of _burying a man on time_! I’m a sexton, Sir, and undertaker—Jack Crossbones, at your service—‘Daddy Crossbones’ they call me at Porter’s.” “Ah! I understand. Your mare ran away with the hearse.” “Ran away! A child could hold her. Oh! yes, of course she ran away,” added the old gentleman, looking full in my face with a very quizzical expression, and putting the forefinger of his right hand on the right side of his party-coloured proboscis. “My dear Sir,” said I, “you have excited my curiosity amazingly, and I should esteem it as a particular favour if you would be a little less oracular and a little more explicit.” “I don’t know as I’d ought to tell you,” said my new acquaintance very slowly and tantalizingly. “If you was one of these here writing chaps, you might poke it in the ‘Spirit of the Times,’ and then it would be all day with me. But I don’t care if I do make a clean breast of it. Honour bright, you know.” “Of course.”