I remembered how Leonard had once told me of some fellow or other he had seen somewhere in Cashmere. I expect Mr. FitzHoward's allusion to Indian fakirs had recalled the conversation to my mind. This fellow had pretended to go to sleep, and had then been put in a hole in the ground, and covered with earth--regularly buried, in fact. Some time afterwards--I forget how long--he had been dug up again, and his friends had tried to waken him up. They tried all sorts of things; beat him with sticks, even cut him with knives. In vain. He would not be roused. So they concluded he was dead. They placed the body in the hut, or house, or whatever it was, in which Leonard was staying; in the very apartment, in fact, in which he slept. In the middle of the night Leonard woke up and saw the dead man coming to life. He stole towards Leonard's bed with a knife in his hand. Leonard lay perfectly still. In another second or two he would have himself been dead; and this time really. But, just as the fellow was leaning over, in the very act of striking, Leonard shot him with a revolver. The man fell on to him a corpse. About his being a corpse there was, on this occasion, no shadow of doubt whatever. Twickenham's inference was that the whole thing, sleeping, burying, and digging up again, had been a trick. I wondered if the show at which we were assisting was a trick. One never knows. Though it was difficult to see where the deceit came in. There was the man; there he was two days ago. That he appeared then as he appeared now I, for one, was prepared to testify. The only question was--was he released each night, after the departure of the public, to enjoy a supper, say, of pork and beans, and a hand of cards with Mr. FitzHoward? It seemed hardly likely that the management would be a party to so egregious a swindle on the British public. It would mean ruin if discovered. Since large interests were at stake, the game would surely not be worth the candle. And without active managerial participation the thing could not be done. Suppose, on the other hand, the man was dead, as he seemed--that he had died to make an Aquarium side show? It occurred to me that, both legally and morally, we spectators would be in rather an uncomfortable position. Possibly it was my recollection of Twickenham's story which served to emphasise, to my thinking, the sleeper's resemblance to its narrator. As I looked I became more and more convinced that it was he I saw. Indeed, all doubt was at an end. I felt that he had only to open his eyes, and speak, for me to realise that the thing had been certain from the first. That being the case, only one of two things could save us all from ruin.