“Just eleven,” exclaimed Soelling.  “It’s too early to go to bed, and too late to go anywhere else.  We’ll go up to your room, little Simsen, and see if we can’t have some sort of a lesson this evening.  You have your colored plates and we’ll try to get along with them.  It’s a nuisance that we should have lost those arms just this evening.”

“The Doctor can have all the arms and legs he wants,” grinned Hans, who came out of the doorway just in time to hear Soelling’s last word.

“What do you mean, Hans?” asked Soelling in astonishment.

“It’ll be easy enough to get them,” said Hans.  “They’ve torn down the planking around the Holy Trinity churchyard, and dug up the earth to build a new wall.  I saw it myself, as I came past the church.  Lord, what a lot of bones they’ve dug out there!  There’s arms and legs and heads, many more than the Doctor could possibly need.”

“Much good that does us,” answered Soelling.  “They shut the gates at seven o’clock and it’s after eleven already.”

“Oh, yes, they shut them,” grinned Hans again.  “But there’s another way to get in.  If you go through the gate of the porcelain factory and over the courtyard, and through the mill in the fourth courtyard that leads out into Spring Street, there you will see where the planking is torn down and you can get into the churchyard easily.”

“Hans, you’re a genius!” exclaimed Soelling in delight.  “Here, Simsen, you know that factory inside and out, you’re so friendly with that fellow Outzen who lives there.  Run along to him and let him give you the key of the mill.  It will be easy to find an arm that isn’t too much decayed.  Hurry along, now; the rest of us will wait for you upstairs.”

To be quite candid I must confess that I was not particularly eager to fulfill Soelling’s command.  I was at an age to have still a sufficient amount of reverence for death and the grave, and the mysterious occurrence of the stolen arms still ran through my mind.  But I was still more afraid of Soelling’s irony and of the laughter of my comrades, so I trotted off as carelessly as if I had been sent to buy a package of cigarettes.

It was some time before I could arouse the old janitor of the factory from his peaceful slumbers.  I told him that I had an important message from Outzen, and hurried upstairs to the latter’s room.  Outzen was a strictly moral character; knowing this, I was prepared to have him refuse me the key which would let me into the fourth courtyard and from there into the cemetery.  As I expected, Outzen took the matter very seriously.  He closed the Hebrew Bible which he had been studying as I entered, turned up his lamp and looked at me in astonishment as I made my request.

“Why, my dear Simsen, it is a most sinful deed that you are about to do,” he said gravely.  “Take my advice and desist.  You will get no key from me for any such cause.  The peace of the grave is sacred.  No man dare disturb it.”