"'There are stranger things in heaven and earth'"--quoted Ransom; but
Hazen was already in conversation with the group of hotel idlers who had
crowded up at sound of his loud voice.

After a careful look which had taken in all of their faces, he had
approached one young fellow, covering the lower part of his face as he
did so.

"Halloo! Yates," he called out. "Don't you remember the day we tied two
chickens together, leg to leg, and sent them tumbling down the hill back
of old Wylie's barn?"

"Alf Hazen!" shouted the fellow, thus accosted. "Why, I thought you--"

"Dead, eh? Of course you did. So did everybody else. But I've come to
life, you see. With sad marks of battle on me," he continued, dropping
his hand. "You all recognize me?"

"Yes, yes," rose in one acclaim from a dozen or more throats after a
moment of awkward uncertainty.

"I know the eyes," vigorously asserted one.

"And the voice," chimed in another. After which rose a confused babel of
ejaculations and exclamatory questions, among which one could detect:

"How did it happen, Alf?" "What took off your jaw?" and other equally
felicitous expressions.

"I'll tell you all about that later," he replied, after silence had in a
measure been restored. "What I want to say now is this. Is it believable
that simultaneously with my own return from the grave another member of
my family should reappear before you from an older and much more certain
burying? I tell you no. The riddle is one which calls for quite another
solution and I have come to assist you in finding it."

Here he cast a sinister glance at Ransom.

The latter met the implied accusation with singular calmness.

"Any assistance will be welcome," said he, "which will enable us to solve
this very serious problem." Then, as Hazen's lip curled, he added with
dignified candor, "I scorn to retort by throwing any doubt on your
assertion of relationship to my lost wife, or the possibility of these
good people being misled by your confident bearing and a possible
likeness about the eyes to the boy they knew. But one question I will
hazard, and that before we have gone a step further. Why does it seem so
credible to you that Georgian, a much loved and loving woman, should have
leaped to a watery death within a week of her marriage? You have just
stated that you found no difficulty in that. Does not that statement call
for some explanation? All your old friends here must see that this is my
due as