On the night of the 13th of September there was a flood in the creek, and Keyser got up at four o'clock in the morning of the 14th and worked until night, trying to save his buildings and his woodpile. He was so busy that he forgot all about its being the day of his death; and as he was very tired, he went to bed early and slept soundly all night.
About six o'clock on the morning of the 15th there was a ring at the door-bell. Keyser jumped out of bed, threw up the front window and exclaimed,
"What do you want at this time of the morning?" demanded Keyser.
"Want?" said Toombs, not recognizing Keyser. "Why, I've brought around the ice to pack Keyser in, so's he'll keep until the funeral. The corpse'd spoil this kind of weather if we didn't."
Then Keyser remembered, and it made him feel angry when he thought how the day had passed and left him still alive, and how he had made a fool of himself. So he said,
"Well, you can just skeet around home agin with that ice; the corpse is not yet dead. You're a little too anxious, it strikes me. You're not goin' to inter me yet, if you have got everything ready. So you can haul off and unload."
About half-past ten that morning the deacons came around, with crape on their hats and gloom in their faces, to carry the body to the grave; and while they were on the front steps the marble-yard man drove up with the flower-pot tombstone and a shovel, and stepped in to ask the widow how deep she wanted the grave dug. Just then the choir arrived with the minister, and the company was assembled in the parlor, when Keyser came in from the stable, where he had been dosing a horse with patent medicine and warm "mash" for the glanders. He was surprised, but he proceeded to explain that there had been a little mistake, somehow. He was also pained to find that everybody seemed to be a good deal disappointed, particularly the tombstone-man, who went away mad, declaring that such an old fraud ought to be buried, anyhow, dead or alive. Just as the deacons left in a huff the tailor's boy arrived with the burial-suit, and before Keyser could kick him off the steps the paper-carrier flung into the door the _Patriot_, in which that obituary notice occupied a prominent place.