'
And when he had got half-way down the aisle, he called back to Irons, in
a loud, frank voice--
'And Martin's not here--could you say where he is?'
But he did not await the answer, and glided with quick steps from the
porch, with a side leer over the wavy green mounds and tombstones. He
had not been three minutes in the church, and across the street he went,
to the shop over the way, and asked briskly where Martin, the sexton,
was. Well, they did not know.
'Ho! Martin,' he cried across the street, seeing that functionary just
about to turn the corner by Sturk's hall-door steps; 'a word with you.
I've been looking for you. See, you must take a foot-rule, and make all
the measurements of that pew, you know; don't mistake a hair's breadth,
d'ye mind, for you must be ready to swear to it; and bring a note of it
to me, at home, to-day, at one o'clock, and you shall have a
crown-piece.'
From which the reader will perceive--as all the world might, if they had
happened to see him enter the church just now--that his object in the
visit was to see and speak with Martin; and that the little bit of
banter with Irons, the clerk, was all by-play, and parenthesis, and
beside the main business, and, of course, of no sort of consequence.
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