It was Luella Morse--the nervous old maid who sang in the choir--who seems to have touched things off. She was filing past the coffin like the rest, but stopped to peer a little closer than anyone else except the Barbours had peered. And then, without warning, she gave a shrill scream and fell in a dead faint. Naturally, the room was at once a chaos of confusion. Old Doctor Pratt elbowed his way to Luella and called for some water to throw in her face, and others surged up to look at her and at the coffin. Johnny Dow began chanting to himself, "He knows, he knows, he kin hear all we're a-sayin' and see all we're a-doin', and they'll bury him that way"--but no one stopped to decipher his mumbling except Steve Barbour. In a very few moments Luella began to come out of her faint, and could not tell exactly what had startled her. All she could whisper was, "The way he looked--the way he looked." But to other eyes the body seemed exactly the same. It was a gruesome sight, though, with those open eyes and that high coloring. And then the bewildered crowd noticed something which put both Luella and the body out of their minds for a moment. It was Thorndike--on whom the sudden excitement and jostling crowd seemed to be having a curiously bad effect. He had evidently been knocked down in the general bustle, and was on the floor trying to drag himself to a sitting posture. The expression on his face was terrifying in the extreme, and his eyes were beginning to take on a glazed, fishy expression. He could scarcely speak aloud, but the husky rattle of his throat held an ineffable desperation which was obvious to all. "Get me home, quick, and let me be. That fluid I got in my arm by mistake ... heart action ... this damned excitement ... too much ... wait ... wait ... don't think I'm dead if I seem to ... only the fluid--just get me home and wait ... I'll come to later, don't know how long ... all the time I'll be conscious and know what's going on ... don't be deceived...." As his words trailed off into nothingness old Doctor Pratt reached him and felt his pulse--watching a long time and finally shaking his head. "No use doing anything--he's gone. Heart no good--and that fluid he got in his arm must have been bad stuff. I don't know what it is." A kind of numbness seemed to fall on all the company. New death in the chamber of death! Only Steve Barbour thought to bring up Thorndike's last choking words. Was he surely dead, when he himself had said he might falsely seem so? Wouldn't it be better to wait awhile and see what would happen? And for that matter, what harm would it do if Doc Pratt were to give Tom Sprague another looking over before burial?