r to utter a sound came to me,
and I made use of it well, for the piercing shriek I uttered, must have
struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it, since it appalled
even myself.

"Then I suppose I must have fainted, but when I recovered consciousness
again, I found myself upon a couch, and a man presenting some stimulus
to me in a cup. I could not distinguish objects distinctly, but I heard
him say, 'Drink, and you will be better.'

"I did drink, for a raging thirst consumed me, and then I fell into a
sound sleep, which, I was afterwards told, lasted nearly twenty-four
hours, and when I recovered from that, I heard again the same voice that
had before spoken to me, asking me how I was.

"I turned in the direction of the sound, and, as my vision was now
clearer, I could see that it was the hangman, whose face had made upon
the scaffold such an impression upon me--an impression which I then
considered my last in this world, but which turned out not to be such by
many a mingled one of pain and pleasure since.

"It was some time before I could speak, and when I did, it was only in a
few muttered words, to ask what had happened, and where I was.

"'Do you not remember,' he said, 'that you were hanged?'

"'I do--I do,' was my reply. 'Is this the region of damned souls?'

"'No; you are still in this world, however strange you may think it.
Listen to me, and I will briefly tell you how it is that you have come
back again, as it were, from the very grave, to live and walk about
among the living."

"I listened to him with a strange and rapt attention, and then he told
how a young and enthusiastic medical man had been anxious to try some
experiments with regard to the restoration of persons apparently dead,
and he proceeded to relate how it was that he had given ear to the
solicitations of the man, and had consented to bring my body after it
was hung for him to experiment upon. He related how the doctor had been
successful, but how he was so terrified at his own success, that he
hastily fled, and had left London, no one knowing whither he had gone.

"I listened to this with the most profound attention, and then he
concluded, by saying to me,--

"'There can be no doubt but my duty requires of me to give you up again
to the offended laws of your country. I will not, however, do that, if
you will consent to an arrangement that I shall propose to you.'

"I asked him what the arrangement was, and he said that if I wo