The chapter opens with a seemingly dead man, Henry Armstrong, awakening in his grave. Despite being buried, he does not believe he is dead but rather extremely ill. Resigned to his situation, he falls asleep in his grave.
Meanwhile, above ground, on a stormy, lightning-filled summer night, three men are in the graveyard. Two of them are young medical students, and the third is a man known as Jess, a cemetery worker. Under cover of the dark and stormy night, they feel secure as they believe no one would witness their grave-robbing activity. Their objective is to dig up Henry Armstrong's grave. A horse and wagon stand ready outside the cemetery wall, likely intended to transport the body back to their medical college for study or dissection.
The grave excavation proceeds easily as the soil is loosely packed, having only been filled a few hours prior. The removal of the coffin, however, is a bit more challenging. After unearthing the coffin, Jess unscrews the lid, revealing Armstrong's body.
At that very moment, lightning illuminates the scene, and a crack of thunder reverberates through the air. To the men's utter shock, Henry Armstrong tranquilly sits up. The two students, terrified by this unexpected and seemingly supernatural event, flee the scene.
The following morning, still pale and anxious from their harrowing experience, the students meet at the medical college. They find a horse and wagon parked near the door of their dissecting room and enter to find Jess, unphased by the previous night's events, waiting for his pay. On a table lies the body of Henry Armstrong, his head marred with blood and clay from a blow delivered by a spade.
The chapter is a mix of horror and dark humour, presenting an eerie tale of grave robbing gone awry and the incredible resilience of a man who refuses to accept his own death. It also subtly criticizes the lengths to which the medical students are willing to go for their studies, completely disregarding moral and legal boundaries.