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 true, though we had our doubts.  We had found such cases before in our practice east, where men seemed to be alive, but it was only temporary.  Before we had got them cut up they were dead enough for all practical purposes.  Then I laid the icicle across Pa’s abdomen, and went on to tell him that even if he was alive it would be better for him to play that he was dead, because he was such a nuisance to his family that they did not want him, and I was telling him that I had heard that in his lifetime he was very cruel to his boy, a bright little fellow who was at the head of his class in Sunday school and a pet wherever he was known, when Pa interrupted me and said, ’Doctor, please take that carving knife off my stomach, for it makes me nervous.  As for that boy of mine, he is the condemndest little whelp in town, and he isn’t no pet anywhere.  Now, you let up on this dissectin’ business, and I will make it all right with you.’  We held another consultation and then I told Pa that we did not feel that it was