"Is there not?" smiled the other, and bending a little nearer he whispered in low, impressive accents: "What would you give me, Harold Colville, if I could take Lily Lawrence from her coffin to-night, cheat the grave-worm of its prey, and give her to your arms, warm, living, beautiful—dead to all the world, alive only to you?"
"Great Heaven! the half of my fortune were not too great a price for such a miracle," breathed Colville, excitedly. "But, Pratt, you are raving! Even your skill, great though I own it to be, could not accomplish that, unless you are leagued with the devil, as I have often suspected you are."
"Thanks," said the grim physician, curtly, then interrogated calmly: "So ten thousand dollars would not weigh much in the scale against Lily Lawrence living?"
"Not a feather's weight! I would give it to you freely, gladly, but, Pratt, you cannot do it!"
"I can do it! Listen to me, Colville," he whispered breathlessly. "Lily Lawrence lies in her coffin to-night, to all the world dead: but to me she is a living woman, and as such may be resurrected."
"But how—why——"
"Be calm, I will explain all. When her lifeless form was discovered I was hastily called in. I went; I carefully examined the body, which lay, to all appearance, cold and dead. I found an almost imperceptible warmth about her heart, a tinge of color in the palms of her hands, and a vacant stare in the eyes resembling death, but which might be only produced by that rare and strange disease known to medical men as 'catalepsy.' There was a slight flesh-wound about the heart; but the blow had been struck by such a trembling hand that it had failed to penetrate a vital part, and the dreadful shock of the attempted murder (for I do not believe in the sapient jury's verdict of suicide) threw the poor girl into a state of syncope, or catalepsy, so closely resembling death that it deceived all but my professional eyes."
"Yet you suffered them to entomb a living woman?"
"For your sake, remember, Colville; for as I knelt by the beautiful creature, half stunned by my startling discovery, the thought of you darted into my head like an inspiration. I remembered what you must suffer if she lived to bless your rival with her love. I said to myself—It will be several days, most likely, before she rouses from this trance of death. Let them bury her, and make to themselves other idols. In the meantime I will resurrect her, give her to Colville's eager arms, and earn his eternal gratitude as well as a more substantial fee for myself."
"Pratt, you are a demon!"