The body was not in its coffin--it had not there quietly slept the long sleep of death common to humanity.

Where was it then?
What had become of it?
Where, how, and under what circumstances had it been removed?
Had it itself burst the bands that held it, and hideously stalked forth into the world again to make one of its seeming inhabitants, and kept up for a hundred years a dreadful existence by such adventures as it had consummated at the hall, where, in the course of ordinary human life, it had once lived?
All these were questions which irresistibly pressed themselves upon the consideration of Henry and his brother.

They were awful questions.
And yet, take any sober, sane, thinking, educated man, and show him all that they had seen, subject him to all to which they had been subjected, and say if human reason, and all the arguments that the subtlest brain could back it with, would be able to hold out against such a vast accumulation of horrible evidences, and say--"I don't believe it." Mr.Chillingworth's was the only plan.

He would not argue the question.
He said at once,-- "I will not believe this thing--upon this point I will yield to no evidence whatever." That was the only way of disposing of such a question; but there are not many who could so dispose of it, and not one so much interested in it as were the brothers Bannerworth, who could at all hope to get into such a state of mind.
The boards were laid carefully down again, and the screws replaced.
Henry found himself unequal to the task, so it was done by Marchdale, who took pains to replace everything in the same state in which they had found it, even to the laying even the matting at the bottom of the pew.
Then they extinguished the light, and, with heavy hearts, they all walked towards the window, to leave the sacred edifice by the same means they had entered it.
"Shall we replace the pane of glass ?" said Marchdale.
"Oh, it matters not--it matters not," said Henry, listlessly; "nothing matters now.

I care not what becomes of me--I am getting weary of a life which now must be one of misery and dread." "You must not allow yourself to fall into such a state of mind as this," said the doctor, "or you will become a patient of mine very quickly." "I cannot help it." "Well, but be a man.