u'd a dide to see Pa look at us when he woke up. I saw him open
his eyes, and then we began to talk about cutting up dead men. We put
hickery nuts in our mouths so our voices would sound different, so he
wouldn't know us, and was telling the other boys about what a time we had
cutting up the last man we bought. I said he was awful tough, and when we
had got his legs off and had taken out his brain, his friends came to the
dissecting room and claimed the body, and we had to give it up, but I
saved the legs. I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and
he squirmed around to get up, but found he was fast. I had pulled his
shirt up under his arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I
took an icicle, and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on
the table in beer botles, I drew the icicle across Pa's stummick and I
said to my chum, 'Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and
see if he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as
the coroner said he did.' Pa shuddered all over when he felt the icicle
going over his bare stummick, and he said, 'For God's sake, gentlemen,
what does this mean? I am not dead.'

"The other boys looked at Pa with astonishment, and I said 'Well, we
bought you for dead, and the coroner's jury said you were dead, and by the
eternal we ain't going to be fooled out of a corpse when we buy one, are
we Doc?' My chum said not if he knowed his self, and the other students
said, 'Of course he is dead. He thinks he is alive, but he died day before
yesterday, fell dead on the street, and his folks said he had been a
nuisance and they wouldn't claim the corpse, and we bought it at the
morgue.' Then I drew the icicle across him again, and I said, 'I don't
know about this, doctor. I find that blood follows the scalpel as I cut
through the cuticle. Hand me the blood sponge please.' Pa began to wiggle
around, and we looked at him, and my chum raised his eye-lid, and looked
solemn, and Pa said, 'Hold on gentlemen. Don't cut into me any more, and I
can explain this matter. This is all a mistake. I was only drunk.' We went
in a corner and whispered, and Pa kept talking all the time. He said if we
would postpone the hog killing he could send and get witnesses to prove
that he was not dead, but that he was a respectable citizen, and had a
family. After we held a consultation I went to Pa and told him that what
he said about being alive might possibly be tru