But along with all these distracting incidents of the Fourth of July, there was a bit of seriousness and worry that lingered in a back nook of my mind, connected with that funeral which the Old Squire and I had attended. I felt that there was something, some question concerning it, which I must solve, or settle, before I could feel right again. I had never seen a person lying dead before; I tried not to think about it and in part succeeded, when there were a good many other things going on, yet all the time I knew that it was there in my mind and must be thought about before long. When I was very tired and first shut my eyes, on lying down at night, I would see that man in his coffin so plainly that I would fairly jump in bed, and then have to turn over several times and begin talking with Halstead, somewhat to his annoyance, for without quite understanding it, I suppose, he yet perceived that it was not a genuine conversational effort. During the days following the Fourth, this impression of death which had entered my mind began to assume more definite limits, and grew pertinent to my own status. I had heard that the average age of man was thirty-three years, and granting that I should reach that age, I could expect to live a little over twenty years more. That was a long time, to be sure, twenty years; but it would pass, and at the end of it I should have to die and look as that man looked, and be buried in the ground. The thought of it caused me to gasp suddenly, and filled me with a sense of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar mental experience, when the drear fact of death is first realized. It continued to weigh heavily on my mind; and by way of relief from it, I followed Theodora out into the garden the next Sunday evening, and after quite an effort, opened the subject with her. There was no one else with whom I could have summoned resolution to broach that topic. "Did you ever see anybody after they were dead?" I asked her. She did not seem very much surprised at the question, since it was Sabbath eve. "Do you mean their body?" she inquired. "Yes, their body," I replied. "I have seen three," she said, at length. "Didn't it make you feel strange?" I asked. "It did me. It is an awful thing to die and be put down into the ground, with all that earth on one." "Oh, but they don't know it," said Theodora. "It is only their dead bodies; their spirits are far away." "Yes," I said, "but I cannot help thinking of their bodies, and that it is them still, only they cannot wake up and speak." "Oh, no, their spirits are far away," replied my gentle cousin, confidently. "But that man, the one whose funeral Gramp and I went to, he died intoxicated. Where do you honestly think he is now?" I asked her. "It's a dreadful thing to think of," replied Theodora, solemnly. "You know the Bible says, no drunkard can go to heaven."