"Yes," he said. "I kept a-going because I knew that he just couldn't bury her there. And all that day and all night, and all the next day and the next night, and the next and the next he just called her and called her and called her. I don't want to go through another thing like that, you can be sure. And she was dead, sir; she was dead, I tell you." "But of course, she wasn't, you know she wasn't," I said: "You know she must have been alive. What makes you think she was dead?" "She was dead, sir," he repeated stubbornly. And Delaroche, when he told me, that one time his lips were unsealed in a burst of hysteria, said the same thing. "She was dead, Romer," he said; "she was dead, I tell you. But I called her, called her. And I tell you I _called_ her back. You see, it was impossible; I couldn't let her go like that. I called her back to me, _called_ her back, I tell you!" THE END