aerial, unseen watching
place, I saw them cut it--me--down. They tried the pulse of the body
that had been mine, they examined my staring eyes. Then I heard them
pronounce me dead. The fools! I had known I was dead for a minute or two
by that time, else how could my spirit have been gone from the shell and
be out floating around over their heads?"

* * * * *

He paused here as he asked his question, his head turning on its dry and
creaking neck to include us all in his query. But none of us spoke. We
were dreaming it all, of course, or were mad, we thought.

"In just a short while," went on the skeleton, "my 'brother' came
driving slowly in for my body. With no special hurry he loaded me onto
his little truck and drove easily away. But once clear of the crowd he
pushed his foot down on the gas and in five more minutes--with me
hovering all the while alongside of him, mind you--floating along as
though I had been a bird all my life--we turned into the driveway of a
summer home. The scientific guy met him. They carried me into the house,
into a fine-fitted laboratory. My dead body was placed on a table, a
huge knife ripped my clothes from me.

"Quickly the loads from ten or a dozen hypodermic syringes were shot
into different parts of my naked body. Then it was carried across the
room to what looked like a large glass bottle, or vase, with an opening
in the top. Through this door I was lowered, my body being held upright
by straps in there for that purpose. The door to the opening was then
placed in position, and by means of an acetylene torch and some easily
melting glass, the door was sealed tight.

"So there stood my poor old body. Ready for the experiment to bring it
back to life. And as my new self floated around above the scientist and
his helper I smiled to myself, for I was sure the experiment would prove
a failure, even though I now knew that the sheriff's haste had kept him
from placing the rope right at my throat and had saved me a broken neck.
I was dead. All that was left of me now was my spirit, or soul. And that
was swimming and floating about above their heads with not an
inclination in the world to have a thing to do with the husk of the man
I could clearly see through the glass of the bell.

* * * * *

"They turned on a huge battery of ultra-violet rays then," continued the
hollow droning of the man who had been hanged, "which, as the s