black doors thrown wide open. She had come too late! Her
father's body had already been thrust into the fiery furnace.

The antagonism of Winkletip's family to his views concerning the
cremation of the dead was an open secret with every attache of the
society, and the men in charge were determined that the society should
come out the winner. They were on the lookout for the body. Everything,
to the minutest detail, was in readiness. The furnace had been pushed to
its greatest destroying power, and hence was it that haste overcame
dignity when the foam-flecked and panting horses of the undertaker drew
up in front of the entrance of the crematory.

The ice-chest was snatched from the hearse, borne hurriedly into the
furnace-room, set upon the iron platform, wheeled into the very center
of the white flames, whose waving, curling, twisting tongues seemed
reaching out to their fullest length, impatient for their prey, and the
iron doors slammed shut with a loud, resounding clangor.

At that instant a woman, hatless and breathless, with disheveled hair,
burst into the furnace-room.

"Hold! Hold!" she shrieked, and then her hands flew to her face, and
staggering backward and striking heavily against the wall, she sank,
limp and lifeless, in a heap on the stone floor of the furnace-room.

But the two men in charge had neither eyes nor ears for Mrs. Timmins. As
the doors closed they sprang to their posts of observation, in front of
the two peep-holes, and stood watching the effect of the flames upon the
huge ice-chest.

Its wooden covering parted here and there with a loud crack, laying bare
the metal case, from the seams of which burst fitful puffs of steam. Now
came a sight so strange and curious that the two men held their breath
as they gazed upon it! By the vaporizing of the water from the melted
ice the flames were pushed back from the chest, and it lay there for an
instant, as if protected by some miraculous aura.

Then happened something which caused the men to reel and stagger as if
their limbs were paralyzed by drink, and which painted their faces with
as deep a pallor as death's own hand could have laid upon them.

From the furnace depths came forth a dull, muffled cry of "Help! Help!"

Making a desperate effort, the men tore open first the outer and then
the inner doors of the fire chamber. As the air rushed in, the lid of
the metal chest burst silently open. Again the cry of "Help!" rang out,
and two hands