me, and the scientist must have seen it in the next second, for
he sprang forward with a choking cry of delight. Then the lolling head
inside lifted a bit. I--still desperately clinging with my spirit hands
to the outside, and all the time growing weaker and weaker--I saw the
breast of my body rise and fall. The assistant picked up a heavy steel
hammer and stood ready to crash open the glass at the right moment. Then
my once dead eyes opened in there to look around, while I, clinging and
gasping outside, just as I had on the scaffold, went into a deeper,
darker blackness than ever. Just before my spirit life died utterly I
saw the eyes of my body realize completely what was going on, then--from
the inside now--I saw the scientist give the signal that caused the
assistant to crash away the glass shell with one blow of his hammer.

"They reached in for me then, and I fainted. When I came back to
consciousness I was being carefully, slowly revived, and nursed back to
life by oxygen and a pulmotor."

* * * * *

The terrible creature telling us this tale paused again to look around.
My knees were weak, my clothes wet with sweat.

"Is that all?" I asked in a piping, strange voice, half sarcastic, half
unbelieving, and wholly spellbound.

"Just about," he answered. "But what do you expect? I left my friend the
scientist at once, even though he did hate to see me go. It had been all
right while he was so keen on the experiment himself and while he only
half believed his ability to bring me back. But now that he'd done it,
it kinda worried him to think what sort of a man he was turning loose of
the world again. I could see how he was figuring, and because I had no
idea of letting him try another experiment on me, p'r'aps of putting me
away again, I beat it in a hurry.

"That was five years ago. For five years I've lived with only just part
of me here. Whatever it was trying to get back into that glass just
before my body came to life--my spirit, I've been calling it--I've been
without. It never did get back. You see, the scientist brought me back
inside a shell that kept my spirit out. That's why I'm the skeleton you
see I am. Something vital is missing."

He stood up cracking and creaking before us, buttoning his loose coat
about his angular body. "Well, boys," he asked lightly, "what do you
think of that?"

"I think you're a liar! A damn liar!" I cried. "And now, if you don't
want me to