"
Packman Jim lurched against the speaker ere the words were well out of
his mouth. With an oath the man shoved him back, and Jim stiffly leaned
against the seat in as nearly the attitude of the corpse, to whom he was
acting as understudy, as he was able to assume. They had got a little
beyond Kalefoot, and the flooded river was sending its moaning voice
above the sough of the wind and the drip of the rain when one of the men
spoke again to his companion. His voice was husky, and he spoke in a low
tone as though he feared some eavesdropper.
"Before God, man," he said, "I can feel the body moving." The other, in
his voice all the horror of a dread he had been trying to hide, answered
in a shrill scream, "It's _warm_, I tell ye!--the corpse is _warm!_"
Then came Dandy Jim's opportunity. His face was white enough in the
uncertain glimmer of the gig's lamps when he thrust his head out of the
sack and looked first at one and then at another of his companions. In a
deep and hollow voice he spoke:
"If you had been where I hae been, your body would burn too," said he.
A screech and a roar were, according to Dandy Jim, the result of his
remark, and on either side of the gig a man cast himself out into the
darkness, the rain, and the mud, and ran--ran--in heedless terror for an
unknown sanctuary.
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