Woven with the Ship Part 45

"Nonsense! You shall marry Haverford! You must!"

At this moment a strange thing occurred. Geraldine wrenched herself away from her father, threw herself upon the physical half of me, and whispered, "I'll die with him first!"

Something pa.s.sed over me as a blinding lightning flash, and behold!

The body in the coffin struggled, sat up, clasped a trembling arm about Geraldine, and exclaimed,--

"I am not dead, Geraldine. And you, you infernal old villain, get out of my sight! Take off the battery; give me something to eat and drink!"

The spirit had entered my body again. My love for Geraldine and her love for me had wrought the miracle, just as anxiety for her and love for her had wrought the first change. Ay, through love the world is made and destroyed.

There is nothing more to tell. My story was so circ.u.mstantial that people generally believe it in spite of the learned doctors, who hold it to have been merely a case of suspended animation. In my mind and Geraldine's, however, there is no doubt about it. Besides, does not the learned Archidechus say--but never mind; if it were not for this affair Geraldine says she might have been years in finding out her heart as she did when she thought me dead, and her father never would have consented to our marriage as he did.

He is very kind to us now, and we are very happy, and have only anxiety lest my spirit should ever take to wandering again. Geraldine says if it does she will marry John Haverford, who is still pining for her; but I know that is only a threat to prevent the dissolution of partners.h.i.+p, as she confesses in private that she would never marry any one but me--never!

I am very fat and well now, and have burned up the parchments of the learned Archidechus, and am training myself utterly to disbelieve such things. The memory seems like a faint dream now in the light of our present happiness, for Geraldine is the loveliest and sweetest of wives, and says I am the best of husbands. And giving her that last word, I lay down the pen.

THE END