ONE SUMMER NIGHT



The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove
that he was dead: he had always been a hard man to convince. That
he really was buried, the testimony of his senses compelled him to
admit. His posture--flat upon his back, with his hands crossed upon
his stomach and tied with something that he easily broke without
profitably altering the situation--the strict confinement of his
entire person, the black darkness and profound silence, made a body
of evidence impossible to controvert and he accepted it without
cavil.

But dead--no; he was only very, very ill. He had, withal, the
invalid's apathy and did not greatly concern himself about the
uncommon fate that had been allotted to him. No philosopher was he--
just a plain, commonplace person gifted, for the time being, with a
pathological indifference: the organ that he feared consequences
with was torpid. So, with no particular apprehension for his
immediate future, he fell asleep and all was peace with Henry
Armstrong.

But something was going on overhead. It was a dark summer night,
shot through with infrequent shimmers of lightning silently firing a
cloud lying low in the west and portending a storm. These brief,
stammering illuminations brought out with ghastly distinctness the
monuments and headstones of the cemetery and seemed to set them
dancing. It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely