“Mr. McLAUGHLIN,” he solemnly remarks, waving his umbrella at the graves around, “in this scene you behold the very last of man’s individual being.  In this entombment he ends forever.  Tremble, J. McLAUGHLIN! —­forever.  Soul and Spirit are but unmeaning words, according to the latest big things in science.  The departed Dr. Davis SLAVONSKI, of St. Petersburg, before setting out for the Asylum, proved, by his Atomic Theory, that men are neatly manufactured of Atoms of matter, which are continually combining together until they form Man; and then going through the process of Life, which is but the mechanical effect of their combination; and then wearing apart again by attrition into the exhaustion of cohesion called Death; and then crumbling into separate Atoms of native matter, or dust, again; and then gradually combining again, as before, and evolving another Man; and Living, and Dying, again; and so on forever.  Thus, and thus only, is Man immortal.  You are made exclusively of Atoms of matter, yourself, John McLAUGHLIN.  So am I.”

“I can understand a man’s believing that he, himself, is all Atoms of matter, and nothing else,” responds old MORTARITY, skeptically.

“As how, John McLAUGHLIN,—­as how?”

“When he knows that, at any rate, he hasn’t got one atom of common sense,” is the answer.

Suddenly Mr. Bumstead arises from the grave and frantically shakes hands with him.

“You’re right, sir!” he says, emotionally.  “You’re a gooroleman, sir.  The Atom of common sense was one of the Atoms that SLAVONSKI forgot all about.  Let’s do some skeletons now.”

At the further end of the pauper burial-ground, and in the rear of the former Alms-House, once stood a building used successively as a cider-mill, a barn, and a kind of chapel for paupers.  Long ago, from neglect and bad weather, the frail wooden superstructure had fallen into pieces and been gradually carted off; but a sturdy stone foundation remained underground; and, although the flooring over it had for many years been covered with debris and rank growth, so as to be undistinguishable to common eyes from the general earth around it, the great cellar still extended beneath, and, according to weird rumor, had some secret access for old MORTARITY, who used it as a charnel store-house for such spoils of the grave as he found in his prowlings.

To the spot thus historied the two moralists of the moonlight come now, and, with many tumbles, Mr. McLAUGHLIN removes certain artfully placed stones and rubbish, and lifts a clumsy extemporized trap-door.  Below appears a ricketty old step-ladder leading into darkness.

“I heard such cries and groans down there, last Christmas Eve, as sounded worse than the Latin singing in the Ritualistic church,” observes McLAUGHLIN.

“Cries and groans!” echoes Mr. Bumstead, turning quite pale, and momentarily forgetting the snakes which he is just beginning to discover among the stones.  “You’re getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need some more West Indian cough-mixture.—­Wait until I see for myself whether it’s got enough sugar in it.”