The Captain does stay, listening on. To hear the story of the planted and plucked up flower; of another and later visit made by Wingate to the cemetery in daylight, then seeing what led him to suspect, that not only had the plant been destroyed, but all the turf on the grave disturbed! He speaks of his astonishment at this, with his perplexity. Then goes on to give account of the evening spent with Joseph Preece in his new home; of the waifs and strays there shown him; the counterfeit coins, burglars’ tools, and finally the shroud—that grim remembrancer, which he recognised at sight!
His narrative concludes with his action taken after, assisted by the old boatman.
“Last night,” he says, proceeding with the relation, “or I ought to say this same mornin’—for ’twar after midnight hour—Joe an’ myself took the skiff, an’ stole up to the chapel graveyard; where we opened her grave, an’ foun’ the coffin empty! Now, Captain, what do ye think o’ the whole thing?”
“On my word, I hardly know what to think of it. Mystery seems the measure of the time! This you tell me of is strange—if not stranger than any! What are your own thoughts about it, Jack?”
“Well, as I’ve already sayed, my thoughts be, an’ my hopes, that Mary’s still in the land o’ the livin’.”
“I hope she is.”
The tone of Ryecroft’s rejoinder tells of his incredulity, further manifested by his questions following.
“But you saw her in her coffin? Waked for two days, as I understood you; then laid in her grave? How could she have lived throughout all that? Surely she was dead!”
“So I thought at the time, but don’t now.”
“My good fellow, I fear you are deceiving yourself. I’m sorry having to think so. Why the body has been taken up again is of itself a sufficient puzzle; but alive—that seems physically impossible!”