Page:A Series of Plays on the Passions Volume 3.pdf/158

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THE DREAM: A TRAGEDY.


Mor. (looking down.) The coffin is of an uncommon size: there must be a leaden one within it, I should think.

Sex. I doubt that: it is only a clumsy shell that has been put together in haste; and I'll be hanged if he who made it ever made another before it. Now it would pine me with vexation to think I should be laid in such a bungled piece of workmanship as this.

Mor. Aye; it is well for those who shall bury thee, Sexton, that thou wilt not be a looker-on at thine own funeral.——Put together in haste, sayest thou! How long may it be since this coffin was laid in the ground?

Sex. By my fay, now, I cannot tell; though many a grave I have dug in this vault, instead of the lay-brothers, who are mighty apt to take a cholic or shortness of breath, or the like, when any thing of hard labour falls to their share. (After pausing.) Ha! now I have it. When I went over the mountain some ten years ago to visit my father-in-law, Baldwick, the stranger, who died the other day, after living so long as a hermit amongst the rocks, came here; and it was shrewdly suspected he had leave from our late Prior, for a good sum of money, to bury a body privately in this vault. I was a fool not to think of it before. This, I'll be sworn for it, is the place.