The next morning, while Peter Lamb was drinking out of the big spring, he saw something push slowly out of the mud at the bottom of the pool. He turned as white as a sheet as he watched it; and in a few minutes he saw that it was a coffin. It floated out, down the creek into the river, and then Peter ran to tell the coroner. That official had a jury waiting, and he proceeded to the coffin. It was old Mr. Piggott, as usual; and they went through the customary routine with him, and were about to bury him, when his family came forward and said they would prefer to inter him in another place, being convinced now there must be a subterranean channel leading from the cemetery to the spring. The coroner couldn't object; but after the Piggotts were gone he said to the jury that people who would take the bread out of the mouth of a poor man in that way would be certain to come to want themselves some day. He said he could easily have paid off the mortgage on his house and let his little girl take lessons on the melodeon besides, if they'd just allowed Piggott to wobble around the way he wanted to.
There was no more trouble up at the cemetery after that until they buried old Joe Middles, who used to have the fish-house over the river at Deacon's. They entombed the old man on Thursday night. On Friday morning one of the Keysers was walking down on the river-bank, and he saw a man who looked very much like Mr. Middles sitting up in a canoe out in the stream fishing. He watched the man as he caught two or three fish, and was just about to conclude that it was some unknown brother of Mr. Middles, when the fisherman looked up and said,
"Who am I? Why, Joe Middles, of course. Who'd you think I was?" remarked the fisherman.
"You ain't Joe Middles, for he's dead. I went to his funeral yesterday."
"Funeral!" exclaimed the fisherman as he stepped ashore. "Well, now, by George! maybe that explains the thing. I've been bothering myself the worst kind to understand something. You know that I remember being at home in bed, and then I went to sleep somehow; and when I woke up, it was dark as pitch. I gave a kick to stretch myself, and knocked the lid off of this thing here--a canoe I thought it was; and then I set up and found myself out here in the river. I took the lid to split into paddles, and I saw on it a plate with the words 'Joseph Middles, aged sixty-four;' and I couldn't imagine how in thunder that ever got on that lid. Howsomdever, I pulled over to the shanty and got some lines and bait and floated out again, thinking while I was here I might as well get a mess of fish before I got home. And so it's a coffin, after all, and they buried me yesterday. Well, that beats the very old Harry, now, don't it? I'm going to row right over to the house. How it'll skeer the old woman to see me coming in safe and sound!"