ghosts in white, while the church tower itself
looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant.
They did not creep far, before they stopped and
stood upright. And then they began to fish.

They fished with a spade, at first. Presently
the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting
some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever
tools they worked with, they worked hard,
until the awful striking of the church clock so
terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his
hair as stiff as his father's.

But, his long-cherished desire to know more
about these matters, not only stopped him in his
running away, but lured him back again. They
were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in
at the gate for the second time; but, now they
seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing
and complaining sound down below, and
their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight.
By slow degrees the weight broke away the
earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young
Jerry very well knew what it would be; but,
when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent
about to wrench it open, he was so frightened,
being new to the sight, that he made off again,
and never stopped until he had run a mile or
more.

He would not have stopped then, for anything
less necessary than breath, it being a spectral
sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable
to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that
the coffin he had seen was running after him;
and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt
upright upon its narrow end, always on the
point of overtaking him and hopping on at his
side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer
to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous
fiend too, for, while it was making the whole
night behind him dreadful, he darted out into
the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its
coming hopping out of them like a dropsical
boy's Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways
too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against
doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it
were laughing. It got into shadows on the
road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip
him up. All this time, it was incessantly
hopping on behind and gaining on him, so
that when the boy got to his own door he
had reason for being half dead. And even then
it would not leave him, but followed him up-stairs
with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed
with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on
his breast when he fell asleep.

From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in
his closet was awakened, after daybreak and
before sunrise, by the presence of his father in
the family room. Something had gone wrong
with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from
the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher
by the ears, and knocking the back of her head
against the headboard of the bed.

"I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher,
"and I did."

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored.

"You oppose yourself to the profit of the
business," said Jerry, "and me and my partners
suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the
devil don't you?"

"I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor
woman protested, with tears.

"Is it being a good wife to oppose your
husband's business? Is it honouring your husband
to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your
husband to disobey him on the wital subject of
his business?"

"You hadn't taken to the dreadful business
then, Jerry."

"It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher,
"to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not
to occupy your female mind with calculations
when he took to his trade or when he didn't.
A honouring and obeying wife would let his
trade alone altogether. Call yourself a
religious woman? If you're a religious woman,
give me a irreligious one! You have no more
nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here
Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it
must be knocked into you."

The altercation was conducted in a low tone
of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman's
kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and
lying down at his length on the floor. After
taking a timid peep at him lying on his back,
with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow,
his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.

There was no fish for breakfast, and not much
of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of
spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-
lid by him as a projectile for the correction of
Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any
symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed
and washed at the usual hour, and set off with
his son to pursue his ostensible calling.

Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his
arm at his father's side along sunny and
crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young
Jerry from him of the previous night, running
home through darkness and solitude from his
grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the
day, and his qualms were gone with the night—
in which particulars it is not improbable that he
had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of
London, that fine morning.

"Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked
along: taking care to keep at arm's length and
to have the stool well between them: "what's a
Resurrection-Man?"

Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement
before he answered, "How should I know?"

"I thought you knowed everything, father,"
said the artless boy.

"Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going
on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes
free play, "he's a tradesman."

"What's his goods, father?" asked the brisk
Young Jerry.

"His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning
it over in his mind, "is a branch of Scientific
goods."

"Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the
lively boy.

"I believe it is somethink of that sort," said
Mr. Cruncher.