“I spare you the recital of the horrors I endured. Your time is too valuable to waste on the story, and the tale too harrowing for your ears. Suffice it that the mere fact of the casket lid being but loosely screwed down saved me from suffocation, and the accident to the hearse must have been God-sent, as it kept me from being buried alive. The shock of my fall restored my faculties, and the old ferryman presently found me in the snow and carried me into his wretched hut, little thinking I had fallen out of a hearse on my way to the grave. I took care that he should not find it out, either, for I decided it was best to remain dead to the world.” “But, my dear Doctor Ludington, why should you do so?” “Do you not remember that my antagonist, Terry Groves, died by my hand in an accidental discharge of the revolver I was trying to wrest from him? Well, if I had lived I should have been tried for his murder, and, being in the house of my enemy, to which I had been falsely lured, I should have had no witness in my favor, and the Groves clan, that hated me, would have hounded me to my death. Public sentiment would have been so dead against me I might have been mobbed and lynched.” “Quite true. But then the young lady? Would she not have testified in your favor?” “I could scarcely have expected it, your excellency. She had always been my enemy, like the rest.” “Indeed? Then how explain your presence in her room at midnight?” “By no connivance of hers, and by no fault of mine, for Eva Somerville is pure as snow. Here are the simple facts: Old Doctor Binks, who is the family physician, employed me often to attend to his patients when he was under the weather. That night, while he was on one of his sprees, I went his rounds for him, and, calling in at his office, while returning home, was entreated to go to Stony Ledge, where he represented Miss Somerville was ill, dying. Duty led me to her room, where I found we had both been made the victim of a practical joke. “She was asleep, with the bloom of health on her lovely cheeks, and as I stood gazing in bewilderment, she awoke and upbraided me with angry words. A spirit of mischief entered into me, and I lingered, chaffing her over the table of refreshments she had spread for a phantom lover, expected at midnight by all the Hallowe’en traditions. In a moment Terry Groves rushed in, purple with anger, heaped on her terms of disgrace, and, ignoring my attempted explanations, fired a bullet into my breast. You know the rest.” “He was too hasty, and his terrible mistake cost him his life.” “Yes, but not by my wish. I was only trying to knock the weapon out of his hand when it was discharged, perhaps by himself, and the ball went into his brain. Poor fellow, how I pity him in his premature grave to-day, and would gladly restore his life to him if I could,” exclaimed Doctor Ludington, with strong emotion, realizing the terrible provocation Terry had had for his fatal haste. Then he added: