“Well, then,” Longinus pursued, “what did happen?”
“That’s what I don’t know. Nothing happened. At least, I saw and heard nothing. I asked the men later if any of them had, and they all insisted, to a man, that they hadn’t heard a sound or seen anything the least bit unusual. Only a moment before I had checked the tomb’s mouth. The seal hadn’t been disturbed. And there was a dim light from a little fire we had kindled earlier to keep off the night chill; it had burned down, but there was still a light on the stone at the mouth. In fact, that’s how we noticed....”
“The Galilean?”
“Oh, no, we didn’t see him. But one moment the stone was in place, and the next ... well, I looked over there, and it had been rolled up the track and the mouth was wide-open.”
“What did you do then?”
“I lighted a torch from the smoldering fire and investigated. The Galilean was gone, disappeared. The linen strips with which the body had been wrapped were lying there, still in folds but collapsed, just as though the body they had been enfolding had melted away.” He shook his head, gestured with palms up. “Longinus, I can’t figure it any other way.”
“You mean you actually believe he returned to life?”
“What else can I believe?”
“But what about the stone? How could he have rolled it back?”
“If he had the power to call back his life,” Cornelius said, “rolling away the stone would surely have been no problem.”