"Yes, yes," sobbed my father, bitterly, "I have killed him—my son, my only son!"
Now I had discovered a secret. Molly was not dead, but living at her aunt's. I knew her address; if I could but be restored to life, I might see her once again. I longed to be able to call out: "Father, I am not dead—comfort yourself," but my tongue refused utterance. I tried to move my limbs, and did all that was in my power to show signs of life, but I still lay powerless—paralysed, for I was in a trance. Oh! the agony I suffered! How long would it last? Should I be really nailed up in a coffin and buried alive? Oh, horror!
Some of my friends the neighbours were called in to see me and mourned over my corpse.
"Poor Jack!" one of them said; "if lads of his kidney are not proof against the epidemic, who may hope to escape?"
The next day an undertaker was sent for to measure me for my coffin.
"Where will all this end?" thought I. "Shall I awake before the coffin is made?"
This was my only hope; but if not, all was lost. Once nailed down, nailed down for ever. The thought was agony.
Here I was, struck down in the flower of my youth, to all appearances dead, yet with my mind keenly alive to all that was going on around me. Oh, that I could become insensible! I knew not how long this dreadful trance would last; all I knew was that if it lasted more than a day or two longer it would be all up with me. I was laid out in state, and all that day and the next friends poured in to gaze upon my corpse.
As the time grew nearer for my funeral the more despairing I got. At length the coffin arrived. I shuddered. Had my last moment actually come? What could I do? Nothing.
"Oh, Heaven!" I cried within myself, "for what fell crime am I doomed to bear this agony of soul?"