Wesley shook his head. “He is not dead, but in a trance,” he replied. CHAPTER XII For half an hour the four men in that room sat watching with painful interest the one who sat motionless in the chair at the end of the table. There was not one of them that had not a feeling of being a watcher by the side of a bed on which a dead body was lying. Not a word was exchanged between them. In the room there was a complete silence--the silence of a death chamber. The sound of the machinery of the mill--the creaking of the wooden wheels, and the rumbling of the grindstones--went on in dull monotony in the mill, and from the kitchen, beyond the oaken door, there came the occasional clink of a pan or kettle; and outside the building there was the clank of the horses of a waggon, and the loud voices of the waggoners talking to the men in one of the lofts, and now and again directing the teams. A cock was crowing drowsily at intervals in the poultry run, and once there was a quacking squabble amongst the ducks on the Mill race. And then, with the lowing of the cows that were being driven to the milking shed, came the laughter of a girl, passing the waggoners. But in the room there was silence, and soon the dimness of twilight. And then John Wesley prayed in a low voice. ***** Enough light remained in the room to allow those watchers to see when consciousness returned to the man's eyes: he was facing the window. But before the expression of death changed to that of life, his arm, that was still stiffly outstretched, and seeming all the more awkward since he had ceased to be on his feet, fell with a startling thud upon the edge of the table. It was as if a dead man had made a movement. Then his eyes turned upon each in the room in turn. He drew a long breath. “You are among friends, Dick; how feel you, my man?” said Jake Pullsford, laying his hand upon Pritchard's that had fallen upon the table. “I saw it again--clear--quite clear, Jake,” said Pritchard. “What saw ye, friend Dick?” asked Jake.