The sexton wipes his grimy hand to press it on the fair, girlish brow. He bends his ear to the delicate lips that still retain the warm, natural coloring of life. A smothered cry breaks from him.
"You are right, Mr. Campbell. Her flesh is warm and moist, her color is life-like and natural, and she breathes faintly. Oh, wonderful—most wonderful! She seems to be in a deep trance-like sleep. How terrible—how terrible to think of! Your daughter has been buried alive."
"She lives!" the father echoes, in wild thankfulness.
"She lives and we must carry her to my cottage as soon as possible. She must not awaken in this dreadful place. It would frighten her into real death," answers the sexton.
They lift the slight form out of its grim receptacle and bear her to the sexton's secluded cot where he lives alone, his wife having died a few months previous. They lay her down on his clean bed in the warm, cozy room; and still her strange, deep slumber is unbroken.
"I will watch beside her," says Mr. Campbell. "You must go back, restore the empty coffin to the grave, and throw in the earth again."
"You do not wish that this discovery shall ever be known, then?" the sexton asks, gravely.
"No—at least not now," Mr. Campbell answers, after a pause of silent thought.
A moment later he adds, wistfully:
"My wife's grave—you will open that too? Who knows but that she, too, may be only sleeping?"