Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

394 RHYS LEWIS.
crawling between my legs until my guide, with a curse, made a
kick at one. I was then certain it was no fancy, but that he,
too, was being pestered by the same vermin. I had had but
little to eat that day, and felt weak and faint. But I tried to
bear up, for I had not come all that way for nothing. At tbe
farthest end of the long and narrow room was a board whereou
lay the " nice cofiS.n," beside which stood a man in his shirt
sleeves, with a paper cap on his head, who on hearing me aud
my guide approach turned to look at us, holding a screw-
driver poised in his hand, his face wearing an expression
like that of a man caught robbing a grave. He took the
trouble to explain to me the excellent points of the coffin !
What cared I about that ? My great object was to see the body
which was within. I had to give the joiner a shilling to un-
screw. However mad the notion, I feared my uncle James
had only simulated death, and that this was but a deep-
laid plan of his to escape from prison. To tell the truth,
I seriously expected, while the joiner was taking out the
last screw and removing the lid, to see my uncle sitting up and
laughing. But it did not happen so; and, blame me who
will, I felt greatly relieved. There he lay, in the same old
clothes, and as dead as a doornail. He, who had ruined my
father, brought my mother and myself the greater part of
our troubles, spent every farthing of the money I had saved
to go to college, and who found no evil too great to commit, was
now powerless and still, vanquished at last by the Great Van-
quisher ! So as to make sure, I felt his hands and his forehead.
They were cold as the encompassing walls. Previous to that
nio-ht I had seen but two dead faces — Seth's and my mother's.
The change there was here ! The Devil had set his mark on
this one, to whom the pangs of death had been horrible. Me-
thought the difference between the pleasant, cheerful look upon
the face of Seth in his coffin, and that upon the one before me
was as wide as heaven is from hell asunder! He was my
uncle, brother to my father ; but I fear that but few worse men
were ever placed between four boards. Looking at him, I felt a
certain degree of awe ; and yet, I thought, everything about
contributed to make a fit end for a character so degraded and
Binful. Although my clothes were sticking to me with a cold