At last the door was open, and headed by Jarks with the lantern, they entered. The cold, earthy smell, the charnel-house feeling shook the nerves of both men. Jarks, accustomed as he was to the presence of the dead, hobbled along without showing any emotion other than wrath, and triumphantly swung the lantern towards a niche wherein reposed a coffin. "Ain't he there quite comfortable?" wheezed he. "Don't I tell you they never goes from here! It's a lovely vault; no corp 'ud need a finer." "Wait a bit!" said Alan, stepping forward. "Turn the light along the top of the coffin, Jarks. Hullo! the lid's loose!" "An' unscrewed!" gasped the sexton. "He's bin getting out." "Unscrewed--loose!" gasped the Rector in his turn. The poor man felt deadly sick. "There must be some mistake." "No mistake," said Alan, slipping back the lid. "The body has been stolen." "No 't'ain't!" cried Jarks, showering the light on the interior of the coffin. "There he is, quiet an'--why," the old man broke off with a cry, "the corp ain't in his winding-sheet!" Phelps looked, Alan looked. The light shone on the face of the dead. Phelps groaned. "Merciful God!" he groaned, "it is Dr. Warrender's body!" CHAPTER V. A NINE DAYS' WONDER There was sensation enough and to spare in Heathton next morning. Jarks lost no time in spreading the news. He spent the greater part of the day in the taproom of the Good Samaritan, accepting tankards of beer and relating details of the discovery. Mrs. Timber kept him as long as she could; for Jarks, possessed of intelligence regarding the loss of Mr. Marlow's body, attracted customers. These, thirsty for news or drink, or both, flocked like sheep into the inn. "To think that a corp of mine should be gone!" creaked he in his aged voice. "Man and boy, I niver heard tell of such things--niver! Why Muster Marlow should go beats me--ay, that it does!" "It doesn't beat me," cried Mrs. Timber in her most acidulated voice. "I know who took the body." "That you don't!" contradicted Jarks incoherently; "fur passon, he don't know, so I don't know as how you'd know, Mrs. Timber." "It was that fat play-actor out of this very house," snapped the landlady. "And how can you prove that, Mrs. Timber?" asked the sexton contemptuously. "Why, he had no money for a bed, and he had to sleep in the open. I dare say he slept in the churchyard, and stole the body to sell it back again, it being well known as Miss Sophy's a Queen of Sheba for riches." "All very well," said Slack the schoolmaster; "but if he took away Mr. Marlow's body, how did he put Dr. Warrender's in its place? And how could he without the key of the vault?" "No," said the stonemason, "he couldn't get into that there vault without a key. I built him myself, me and my mates. If that fat man put the doctor there, he must have killed him. There's a hole in his heart as you could put your fist in. It's murder!" cried the man, dashing his hand on the table, "sacrilege and murder!"