who wished to get rid of Abraham, who caused general indignation when he went tumbling about tipsy among the graves. But the dean said, "What is to become of the poor man? He will remain as a burden either to you or to me; and besides, he has been with us as long as I have been here, and I have always been able to bear with his sad infirmity. It would really go to my heart to drive him away." And so the public were content to keep Abraham as an evidence of Dean Sparre's kindness of heart.
As Woodlouse stood looking at the bones, he was absorbed in philosophical meditation, and he could not help thinking that there was a sort of air of defiance in the grin, with which one of the skulls returned his gaze. It struck him that this skull might perhaps be thinking how peaceful it was to rest here in the sacred earth of the churchyard. But surely it was just as peaceful over there in the house in which the bones were placed; and if neither church nor provost, chaplain nor sexton, gravedigger nor organist, bell-ringer nor acolyte, no, not one of them had got his due, it was quite impossible that it should be otherwise. And when he came to consider further, he thought that he could discover in these bare bones and these bleached skulls, an expression he knew only too well in life; a kind of cleared-out expression, which seems to cling to those who have not paid their debts.
Meanwhile Pastor Martens's sonorous voice echoed over the cemetery as he was approaching the end of his discourse. "The six feet of earth" was repeated again and again, like the refrain upon which
