"I tolt ye so--listen!"
With the spade's point he again gives the coffin a tap. It returns a
hollow sound--too hollow for aught to be inside it!
"No body in there!" he adds.
"Hadn't we better keep on, an' make sure?" suggests the other.
"Sartint we had--an' will."
Once more they commence shovelling out the earth, and continue till it
is all cleared from the coffin. Then, inserting the blade of the
mattock under the edge of the lid, they raise it up; for it is not
screwed down, only laid on loosely--the screws all drawn and gone!
Flinging himself on his face, and reaching forward, the younger man
gropes inside the coffin--not expecting to feel any body there, but
mechanically, and to see if there be aught else.
There is nothing--only emptiness. The house of the dead is untenanted--
its tenant has been taken away!
"I know'd it!" he exclaims, drawing back. "I know'd my poor Mary wor no
longer here!"
It is no body-snatcher who speaks thus, but Jack Wingate, his companion
being Joseph Preece.
After which, the young waterman says not another word in reference to
the discovery they have both made. He is less sad than thoughtful now.
But he keeps his thoughts to himself, an occasional whisper to his
companion being merely by way of direction, as they replace the lid upon
the coffin, cover all up as before, shake in the last fragments of loose
earth from the sheet, and restore the grave turf--adjusting the sods
with as much exactitude, as though they were laying tesselated tiles!
Then, taking up their tools, they glide back to the boat, step into it,
and shove off.
On return down stream they reflect in different ways; the old boatman of
Llangorren still thinking it but a case of body-snatching, done by
Coracle Dick, for the doctors--with a view to earning a dishonest penny.
Far otherwise the thoughts of Jack Wingate. He thinks, nay hopes--
almost happily believes--that the body exhumed was not dead--never has
been--but that Mary Morgan still lives, breathes, and has being!
Volume Three, Chapter XIV.