proposed to exert all the influences of professional skill, to recall
back the soul to its earthly dwelling-place.

"At length I heard the sound of wheels. I found that my friend the
hangman had procured a cart, in which he brought the coffin, that being
a much quicker mode of conveyance than by bearers so that about a
quarter past nine o'clock the vehicle, with its ghastly content, stopped
at the door of his house.

"In my impatience I ran down stairs to meet that which ninety-nine men
out of a hundred would have gone some distance to avoid the sight of,
namely, a corpse, livid and fresh from the gallows. I, however, heralded
it as a great gift, and already, in imagination I saw myself imitating
the learned Frenchman, who had published such an elaborate treatise on
the mode of restoring life under all sorts of circumstances, to those
who were already pronounced by unscientific persons to be dead.

"To be sure, a sort of feeling had come over me at times, knowing as I
did that the French are a nation that do not scruple at all to sacrifice
truth on the altar of vanity, that it might be after all a mere
rhodomontade; but, however, I could only ascertain so much by actually
trying, so the suspicion that such might, by a possibility, be the end
of the adventure, did not deter me.

"I officiously assisted in having the coffin brought into the room where
I had prepared everything that was necessary in the conduction of my
grand experiment; and then, when no one was there with me but my friend
the executioner, I, with his help, the one of us taking the head and the
other the feet, took the body from the coffin and laid it upon a table.

"Hastily I placed my hand upon the region of the heart, and to my great
delight I found it still warm. I drew off the cap that covered the face,
and then, for the first time, my eyes rested upon the countenance of him
who now calls himself--Heaven only knows why--Sir Francis Varney."

"Good God!" said Henry, "are you certain?"

"Quite."

"It may have been some other rascal like him," said the admiral.

"No, I am quite sure now; I have, as I have before mentioned to you,
tried to get out of my own conviction upon the subject, but I have been
actually assured that he is the man by the very hangman himself."

"Go on, go on! Your tale certainly is a strange one, and I do not say it
either to compliment you or to cast a doubt upon you, but, except from
the lips of an old, and valued frien