to say, “Don't you worry--just depend on me.”  Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads.  So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.  Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off.  In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “_He had a rat_!”  Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place.  You could see it was a great satisfaction to the pe