elf.

"You have been out a long time, nearly three hours," he said. "I
think you ought to come in now."

He sighed again. "All right," he said slowly. But he did not rise,
and Mary did not hurry him. She stood looking down at him, while his
slack lips fidgeted and his pale eyes flitted here and there over the
ancient graves.

"Why did you come here to this place?" she asked him presently. Her
voice was very low.

He hesitated. "It's where I ought to be," he said heavily. "Only I
didn't have no luck." One hand went out uncertainly and he pointed to
the graves. "Them chaps is past bothering," he said. "There's no
gettin' at them."

He shook his head--it was as though he shivered--and relapsed into
silence again.

"You shouldn't think about things like that," Mary said.

He looked up at her almost shrewdly. "Think!" he repeated. "I got no
need to think. I know."

"Know--what?"

"Ah!" he said, and gat brooding. "I'm alive, I am," he said, at last;
"but I been better off once. There's no way of tellin' it, 'cos it
don't' fit into words. Words wasn't meant to show such things. But I
wasn't just a limpin', squintin' little welsher; I was something that
could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like
you can feel 'eat and cold. Could feel and know things such as nobody
can't feel or know till 'e's done with this rotten bustle of livin'
and doin' things. That's what I know, Miss; that's what I found out
when I died in that there 'orspital."

Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a
tone of certainty in his voice.

"But," she cried, "you're alive."

"Ay," he said. "I'm alive. That's the doin' of that Fish. He's the
man; proddin' and workin' away there in that big room of his with the
bottles and machines, and bits of dead men on the tables. 'E thinks
I'm a bit touched in the brain, but I know, I do! I remember all
right that mornin', with the grey sky showin' over the wire blinds
and the noise of the carts just beginnin' in the streets. There was
sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin' as
if I was all wet with warm water. I couldn't see at first, but by an'
by I put up my 'and and cleared my eyes--all pins and needles, my
'and was. Then I got on my elbow, and saw--the room and the bottles
and all, and me naked on a table under a big light. An' against the
wall, at the other side o' the room, there was 'im--Fish--in a white-
rubber gown and a