THE TRANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2286, 23 December 1897, Page 61

THE TRANCE.

I was dead 1 There- was no donbt of that. The grave old doctor had for the last time felt my pulse, put his' ear to my chest, and held a mirror over my' lips ; bat the pulse and the heart were still, and the mirror remained unsullied. Then in his saddest pro-, fessional manner he bad turned to my wife, aud-*aying, " It is all over," he had taken his leave. - " Yet, although my body .was cold, my frame rigid, and I could not so much as move an eyelash to signal the fact, I was still in the land of the living. Two of my sense 3at least — sight and hearing — were prefrernatarally acntependl was paiflfnlly conscious of every sound in that chamber of mourning and of everything that came within range "of my Gxed eyeballsr- My two sisters, with their arms about each other, were sobbing audibly and gazing with reddened eyes, from which th,e tears could no longer flow, on all that was left of the- brother they had loved, so well — the playmate of their childhood and the stay of their orphaned -years; My wife was kneeling at the bedside in all the pallor and disarray consequent upon long nights- of watching. At the doctor's pronouncement she had pressed {her lips passionately to 'mine, and feeling her warm tears -streaming, on my, cold cheeks and brow I had, in the recesses of my soul blessed God for this, relief to her eeat-ap agony. How she held my wasted

hand in hers and- seemed reluctant to let 14 go, as though by that link sb« could bridge over the awful gnlf that separated us. Ob, how despairingly. I prayed that my heart would beat, that my h«ad or my hands would stir and give some gign to the mourners that my spirit still dwelt in its earthly tabernacle. But my prayers were unheeded. - Or, stay, was that the answer 7— a great crash from the steeple of the village chorch. A few moments, and another and then another broke the ■ilence of, my death chamber. Jt was tbe boom of the patting ball I - December 1897. H. J. B.