Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/72

 he wanting at a coffin shop at this hour?" thought Jerk. "I wish he was ordering his own, I do!" And with this uncharitable thought he crept along the road and approached the house. A coffin shop isn't a pleasant thing to behold at night. Rows of coffin planks leaned up against the provision shelves, for Mipps supplied the village with bread and small eatables. A half-finished coffin reposed on trestles in the centre of the floor, and around the room hung every conceivable article that had to do with coffins. The atmosphere of coffins spread over everything in the store, and whether young Jerk looked at the bottles of preserves on this shelf or the loaves of dark bread on that, to him they meant but one thing: Death! And he was quite satisfied that any one bold enough to eat of the food in that grizzly shop well deserved to be knocked up solid in one of Mipps's boxes.

The sexton himself was examining with great care a mixture that he was stirring inside a small cauldron. Mr. Rash approached him and asked if there was enough. "Of course there is," answered the sexton. "Ain't the others all had theirs? And there's only you left; last again, as usual. Hang the pot on to your saddle and come along." Jerk fell to wondering what on earth could be inside that pot. He could smell it through the broken casement, and a right nasty smell it was. Mipps led the way through the back of the shop, and Jerk, by changing his position, could see him