Now the young doctor came to the rescue.

There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it.

He had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death.

The fifty dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton.

The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in Nicodemus's bed! This was done--about half past ten in the evening.