The Incredulity of Father Brown
to raise him, he will not rise. Here and now I will put it to the test—I defy the God who is not there to waken the man who sleeps for ever."
There was a shock of silence, and the demagogue had made his sensation.
"We might have known," cried Mendoza in a thick gobbling voice, "when we allowed such men as you———"
A new voice cut into his speech; a high and shrill voice with a Yankee accent.
"Stop! Stop!" cried Snaith the journalist, "Something's up! I swear I saw him move."
He went racing up the steps and rushed to the coffin, while the mob below swayed with indescribable frenzies. The next moment he had turned a face of amazement over his shoulder and made a signal with his finger to Dr. Calderon, who hastened forward to confer with him. When the two men stepped away again from the coffin, all could see that the position of the head had altered. A roar of excitement rose from the crowd and seemed to stop suddenly, as if cut off in mid-air; for the priest in the coffin gave a groan and raised himself on one elbow, looking with bleared and blinking eyes at the crowd.
John Adams Race, who had hitherto known only miracles of science, never found himself able in after years to describe the topsy-turvydom of the next few days. He seemed to have burst out of the
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