"What did you give him, General Gardener?"
The tall, strong man unbuttoned his frock coat.
"Everything I had—my gold chain, my scarf pin, and my ring."
I did not understand all that. What was it? Where did they come from? A horrible presentiment arose in me. They came from the cemetery! They wore the very clothes in which they were buried!
What had happened to them? Were they only apparently dead? Did they awake? Did they rise from the dead? What are they seeking here?
They had a very low-voiced conversation with father. I listened in vain. Only later on, when they got warmed with their subject and spoke more audibly, did I understand them.
"There is no other way," said the professor. "Put it in your will that the coroner shall pierce your heart through with a knife."
Do you remember, my sisters, the last will of our father, which was thus executed?
Father did not say a word. Then the professor went on, saying:
"That would be a splendid invention. Had I been living till now I would have published a book about it. Nobody takes the Indian fakir seriously here in Europe. But despite this, the buried fakirs, who are two months under ground and then come back into life, are very serious men. Perhaps they are more serious than ourselves, with all our scientific knowledge. There are strange, new, dreadful things for which we are not yet matured enough.