“He moved!” cried Uncle Henry, excited now, and rising in his chair, which he wheeled out into the room.

“Moved!” cried “Red.”  “You’re crazy!  He’s stone dead, if ever anyone was.”

“I seen him—­I swear I seen him!” Uncle Henry’s eyes were almost popping from his head.  “Why didn’t someone do something?  Why didn’t they see what he saw?  Oh, to be able to walk, and not sit forever like a dried mummy in this chair!

“But how could he have moved?” “Red” exclaimed.  “He’s dead, I say!”

“I don’t know how he could!” Uncle Henry cried, “but he did!  Look at him!” He could scarcely control himself now.

“Maybe Lopez didn’t kill him after all,” “Red” said, and knelt down to examine Pell’s body again.

“Now don’t tell me that!” Uncle Henry yelled.  “Ain’t we got trouble enough here without him comin’ back?” He could have stood any calamity, it seemed, but the return to life of this wretched Morgan Pell.

“By golly!” “Red” exclaimed, on his knees, his hand on Pell’s white face.

“Was I right?” Uncle Henry said.

“Red” rose slowly.  His voice was almost a whisper.  “He’s alive!” he breathed.

Gilbert, who had not taken Uncle Henry’s word seriously, could not doubt “Red’s” verdict.

“Alive!” he said.  “Oh, it can’t be!”

For the first time Lucia moved.  Her lips opened.  “Alive!” she managed to say.  Again the world crumbled for her.

“It was only a flesh wound,” “Red” said.  “The bullet just grazed his head.”

Lucia looked up.  She was ashen.  She was older, and her eyes seemed to have lost their fire.  “He’s—­really—­alive?” she got out.  She stared down at her husband.

“They should of shot ’im in the stomach!” Uncle Henry stated.  What a mess!  What rotten luck, ran through his weary brain.

Pell’s foot moved again.  Then his arm went up; and slowly he rose on one elbow, pushed away the tablecloth that touched his head, and looked about him.  He was like a man awaking from a sound slumber.  He was dazed, mystified.  In the almost complete darkness, he could not distinguish faces.

“What was it?  What happened?” he inquired, in a hollow voice—­a voice from the tomb!

No one answered.  They were all terror-stricken.

“I can’t remember,” the hollow voice went on.  He fell back on the floor.  He was weak from the loss of blood.  “Red” lifted him up, and helped him around the table to a chair.

Lucia’s eyes never left Morgan Pell’s face.  Was she dreaming?  Was this some madness that had come to her?  This brute come back to life!  It was unbearable, unbelievable.  She could not adjust her mind to the situation.  But with true feminine instinct, she found herself leaving her chair where she had sat so long, going to the kitchen and getting a cup of water.  Then she knew, in some strange way, that she had fetched a bowl, and a towel.  These she placed on the table.  Still she looked at her husband, as though he were a ghost—­as, literally, he was.  They had thought him dead—­gone forever.  Now he was back among them, speaking, moving.  Incredible!  One hand went to her face.  She dreaded the thought of Morgan’s seeing her.