Strongly as his mind had been affected
since he had entered the room, his unreasonable
dread of encountering ridicule, and of
exposing his courage to suspicion, had not
altogether lost its influence over him, even
yet. He lingered irresolutely by the table,
waiting till he could prevail on himself to
open the door, and call, from the landing, to
the man who had shut up the Inn. In his
present hesitating frame of mind, it was a
kind of relief to gain a few moments only by
engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing
the candle. His hand trembled a little, and
the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.
When he closed them on the wick, he closed
them a hair's breadth too low. In an instant
the candle was out, and the room was
plunged in pitch darkness.

The one impression which the absence
of light immediately produced on his mind,
was distrust of the curtained bed—distrust
which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but
which was powerful enough, in its very
vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to
make his heart beat fast, and to set him
listening intently. No sound stirred in the
room but the familiar sound of the rain
against the window, louder and sharper now
than he had heard it yet.

Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible
dread possessed him, and kept him in his
chair. He had put his carpet-bag on the
table, when he first entered the room; and
he now took the key from his pocket,
reached out his hand softly, opened the bag,
and groped in it for his travelling writing-
case, in which he knew that there was a
small store of matches. When he had
got one of the matches, he waited before he
struck it on the coarse wooden table, and
listened intently again, without knowing
why. Still there was no sound in the room
but the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of
the rain.

He lighted the candle again, without
another moment of delay; and, on the
instant of its burning up, the first object in
the room that his eyes sought for was the
curtained bed.

Just before the light had been put out, he
had looked in that direction, and had seen no
change, no disarrangement of any sort, in the
folds of the closely-drawn curtains.

When he looked at the bed, now, he saw,
hanging over the side of it, a long white
hand.

It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the
side of the bed, where the curtain at the
head and the curtain at the foot met.
Nothing more was visible. The clinging curtains
hid everything but the long white hand.

He stood looking at it unable to stir,
unable to call out; feeling nothing, knowing
nothing; every faculty he possessed gathered
up and lost in the one seeing faculty. How
long that first panic held him he never could
tell afterwards. It might have been only for
a moment; it might have been for many
minutes together. How he got to the bed—
whether he ran to it headlong, or whether he
approached it slowly—how he wrought himself
up to unclose the curtains and look in, he
never has remembered, and never will
remember to his dying day. It is enough that
he did go to the bed, and that he did look
inside the curtains.

The man had moved. One of his arms was
outside the clothes; his face was turned a
little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide
open. Changed as to position, and as to one
of the features, the face was otherwise,
fearfully and wonderfully unaltered. The
dead paleness and the dead quiet were on it
still.

One glance showed Arthur this—one glance,
before he flew breathlessly to the door, and
alarmed the house.

The man whom the landlord called "Ben,"
was the first to appear on the stairs. In
three words, Arthur told him what had
happened, and sent him for the nearest doctor.

I, who tell you this story, was then staying
with a medical friend of mine, in practice
at Doncaster, taking care of his patients
for him, during his absence in London; and
I, for the time being, was the nearest doctor.
They had sent for me from the Inn, when the
stranger was taken ill in the afternoon; but
I was not at home, and medical assistance
was sought for elsewhere. When the man
from The Two Robins rang the night-bell, I
was just thinking of going to bed. Naturally
enough, I did not believe a word of his story
about "a dead man who had come to life again."
However, I put on my hat, armed myself
with one or two bottles of restorative medicine,
and ran to the Inn, expecting to find
nothing more remarkable, when I got there,
than a patient in a fit.

My surprise at finding that the man had
spoken the literal truth was almost, if not
quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding
myself face to face with Arthur Holliday
as soon as I entered the bedroom. It was
no time then for giving or seeking explanations.
We just shook hands amazedly; and
then I ordered everybody but Arthur out
of the room, and hurried to the man on the
bed.

The kitchen fire had not been long out.
There was plenty of hot water in the boiler,
and plenty of flannel to be had. With these,
with my medicines, and with such help as
Arthur could render under my direction, I
dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of
death. In less than an hour from the
time when I had been called in, he was
alive and talking in the bed on which he
had been laid out to wait for the Coroner's
inquest.

You will naturally ask me, what had been
the matter with him; and I might treat you,
in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled
with, what the children call, hard words. I