answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony

clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.

In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and

moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of

its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray

gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its

shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the

clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together,

and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was

surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any

speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another

one coming for I recognized his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of a

coffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm.

I mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he

turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting

grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone

when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy

half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging

a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a

steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me,

saying:

Ease this down for a fellow, will you?"

I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so

noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May,

238

Sketches New and Old