�Judge a man by his questions,� advised Diderot, �not by his answers.� This is at once useful guidance for any interviewer; and deep wisdom.

Answers are almost always insufficient. (There is, in fact, a famous ghost story which bears that very name.) They are almost always misleading. To go through life believing the common answers is to walk through a minefield in blinkers. The main reason why science has not made people happier is that the scientific approach asks the wrong questions and then gives incomplete answers. The more you know in that way, the less you know: as many of the wiser scientists have always acknowledged, and occasionally still do.

This is not merely a paradox. Every scientific answer raises more doubts than existed before the asking of the question; leaves the questioner even nakeder and chillier than he was before. It is in this way that science will end the world, rather than with a big bang. Even if there is no big bang, we shall destroy the world in no time, if we go on as we are. We shall crowd ourselves out; starve ourselves out; bore ourselves to bits; choke with protest against all the wrong things.

Knowledge lies within us. It is to be found nowhere else. It is a matter of delight and of inaccessible horizons, rather than of question and answer. Truth can be found only through the imagination, and those whose imaginations have been cramped with answers will never find it.

The so-called ghost story, the story of rare sensations, gives access to a modest, but extremely significant, section of the truth. As the scientist and his alter ego, the bureaucrat, close in the world around us, shutter by shutter, poetry and religion, which represent a fundamentally different way of life, seem to lose much of their authority. People abandon the quest for their own truth, in favour, at the best, of selecting or building up an external truth from ingredients offered by specialists, much of whose impressiveness lies, as they are the first to say, in their incomprehensibility to non-specialists. It is a curious road to truth for the common citizen. Ghost stories, believe it or not, are one of the last outposts of the spirit of man. Hence, undoubtedly, the quite remarkable rise in their popularity. Hence, equally, the great difficulty of finding new ones that qualify; that really are ghost stories.

The essential quality of the ghost story is that it gives satisfying form to the unanswerable; to thoughts and feelings, even experiences, which are common to all imaginative people, but which cannot be rendered down scientifically into �nothing but� something else. In a world of meaningless fact and meaningless violence, people shrink from admitting that they still harbour entities of the imagination. The element of form in the ghost story is, therefore, crucial. Hence the fact that so many of the best ones derive from the period, at the end of the last century and beginning of this, when form was a particular and conscious literary preoccupation. In the present collection will be found a conte by Oscar Wilde which is almost nothing but form, and which manages to carry suggestions going far beyond its precise ironical details and narrative. There is often something curiously extra-terrestrial about Wilde�s style of mockery: something much more poetical than satirical (even in the proper use of that vulgarized word). It is this innate, smiling concern with two worlds at once that largely accounts for the unique charm, going beyond standards of customary literary criticism, that so many, here and abroad, have always found in his ostensibly rather casual opus. �Under the common thing, the hidden grace,� as Lord Alfred Douglas put it, in one of the most beautiful sonnets ever written. No one can hope more from life than to find that particular grace, even occasionally. From Wilde it seldom absented itself, even through all his troubles.

The ghost story, like poetry, deals with the experience behind experience: behind almost any experience. Often, alas, as often as in life, the experience is of guilt; as here perhaps in Pargiton and Harby, The Accident, and When I was Dead. The first of these, by one of the greatest of English literary (and dramatic) critics, relates to the frenzy so often encountered in the community of professional letters, as excess sensibility and the compulsion to self-expression encounter little public interest and less comprehension. In all of us the passion of guilt is terrifyingly autonomous: related at once to everything we do and to nothing we have done; strong or weak in us by virtue of forces which have little connection with our actions or conscious thoughts: expressed, more often than not, so indirectly and obliquely as to build up rather than diminish in the seeming release. The Accident depicts this mystery against an apt and proportionate geographical background, most adroitly and compellingly portrayed; thus it was, we feel, utterly realistically, in every detail. When I was Dead is a very rictus or spasm of guilt; sudden and shattering. Vincent O�Sullivan was a master of this dyeing and soaking in guilt. The curious should try to find a copy of his novel, The Good Girl. The quest is difficult, but the product distinctive. O�Sullivan, having lived a longish life as a more or less well-to-do rentier, in latish middle age found himself ruined, wrote his last book (Opinions) under terrible conditions, and, dying in Paris, ended anonymously in the common pit for the cadavers of paupers.

But guilt is not the only human experience which has a soul. Vulgarity and parvenuism has a soul, and in several stories Saki bleached it white, but never whiter than in The Wolves of Cernogratz. The fancy that ancient lineage has no meaning is here deftly cauterized. So too in Pushkin�s immortal Queen of Spades: on the face of it, redbrick finds retribution, but the curiously mechanistic, matter-of-fact, man-of-the-world telling of the wild tale, offers little hope to the impure hearted of any persuasion. Modeste Tchaikovski, in adapting the story for his brother�s opera, widened the field of sympathy by working up the sentiment between Hermann and Lizavetta. This was quite legitimate, and the splendid Pique Dame would not have lasted with audiences as it has, if he had not done so; but people have become so familiar with the opera, and also with Mr.�Thorold Dickinson�s, in its way, almost equally excellent film, that they may be taken by surprise at the dry-boniness of the original.

Not on the Passenger List appears to concern itself, indeed does concern itself, with something warmer and more positive, something almost cordial; though it is wholly typical of Barry Pain�s work in this field that he conveys to the reader at the same time a very faint feeling that the author himself is not unreservedly convinced by the soft rosiness of the message. The Snow relates to the inadequacy of good intentions. As we all know, we have to be right as well as more or less good. (And that is impossible?) Sir Hugh Walpole has been objected to, since his death, both as an artist and as a man; but in many stories, written from the far side of the fireplace, he excelled in depicting the more horrible injustices of life by projecting them slightly beyond the edges of this world. Carlton�s Father really deals, as much as does A School Story, with the cosmology of the schoolboy; with, that is to say, a world of the imagination from before the prison-house has closed upon him, which, if not fed and fostered by the grown man, brings about the man�s death with its own, and be the man never so assured and apparently in social demand. To my mind, certain of M.�R.�James�s stories contain an element of patronage: one becomes aware as one reads of the really great man. the Provost of Eton, the engineer of the inscription on the Unknown Warrior�s grave, relaxing; all too consciously descending a little, to divert, but also still further to edify, the company. A School Story I find free from this defect. The Provost knew about schoolboys.

And that leaves Mad Monkton; which by concentrating upon some very peculiar and exceptional events, has more to say about life as a whole, about the non-appearing aspects of life, than, possibly, any of the others. Wilkie Collins felt himself to be a man at variance with his epoch. This made his work very uneven, and his life very arcane. To this day, surprisingly little seems dependably to be known about him. Both in writing and in living, he hid his tracks; though perhaps leaving occasional toeprints detectable by the discerning. At its best, his work is so garishly penetrating that he seems to write by the light of gas flares. If he had lived at another time, he might have escaped the inner conflict that produces this effect. But art is so dependent upon conflict, that though he might have gained, we, his readers, would have lost.

I cannot pretend that these tales were not first called ghost stories because they were regarded as stories that dealt with the dead who returned. I should like to suggest that now the word �ghost� should be seen more as the German �geist�; that ghost stones should be stories concerned not with appearance and consistency, but with the spirit behind appearance, the void behind the face of order. Ghost stories inquire and hint, waver and dissemble, startle and astonish. They are a last refuge from the universal, affirmative shout.

The grey-haired man sitting on the wall opposite the Hotel Monte Rosa at Zermatt folded his copy of The Times, knocked out his pipe against the cement parapet on which his feet rested, and, groaning a little, hoisted himself up out of his wicker chair. �The wall� at Zermatt, it should be explained, is not really a wall at all, but a narrow terrace raised a foot or so above the narrow street, with just room on it for a single row of chairs. There, since the earliest days of mountaineering, Englishmen with skinless noses, wearing baggy trousers and shabby tweed coats, have sat during the months of August and September�smoking pipes, reading The Times, or discussing routes up Swiss mountains, propping their feet on the narrow ledge in front of them; watching other climbers enter and leave the hotel, and above all, gossiping as only Englishmen of the more learned professions on holiday know how to gossip. This sin besets climbers in particular: a small class of men, somewhat a race apart, the interest they take in the exploits and even the personal idiosyncrasies of each other is something of a portent.

Now, as the grey-haired man went over to the door of the hotel, tapped the barometer, and then took his large, powerful, and slightly heavy figure off down the street, two much younger men, drinking an early tea at one of the little green-painted iron tables by the hotel doorway, looked after him with interest. They were climbers, too�the button of the Alpine Club adorned their jackets; nailed boots their feet; in the afternoon sunshine the wall was now deserted, and the grey-haired man disappearing past the bootmaker�s, the only subject of interest or speculation in sight.

�Who�s that?� the younger asked.

�That�s old Allard. The alienist chap.�

�What is an alienist?� the very young man inquired, pouring out another cup of tea.

�A loony specialist, my dear Billy. He�s a great swell. Runs that big asylum in Hampshire. He climbs with old Franz Leukerbad. He did that new route on the Pretzelhorn last year.�

Dr.�Allard meanwhile wandered on down the small street. He was taking an off day, and was filling in the time as one does fill in off days at Zermatt. He went into the Wega bookshop and found a new French volume on dementia praecox, which he bought. It was still too early for tea, and he pottered idly up into the little cemetery and stared, as two generations of mountaineers have stared, at the monument commemorating the four climbers who perished on the first ascent of the Matterhorn. The imagination cannot resist the dramatic quality of that episode�success at last, after years of undaunted and fruitless struggle on the part of Edward Whymper, darkened in the very hour of triumph by an unexpected and still inexplicable tragedy. �Lord Francis Douglas,� Dr.�Allard read. He turned away, sighing a little; poor old Whymper, he remembered him the last time he came to Zermatt�the little stocky man, old and shabby, with a square face rather like Lord Beaverbrook�s. He looked across to the Matterhorn, an obelisk of brown and silver, dominating the end of the valley; plastered with new snow, it was, and lovely to see�but no hope of doing the Zmutt ridge for days yet. Well, Whymper was dead now�but when Lord Beaverbrook and his papers and his wealth were forgotten, the Matterhorn would still stand there, he thought, and Whymper be remembered; no one could look at the Matterhorn for ever without remembering Whymper�the man who had made the mountain his monument. And his courage and tenacity, and selfless devotion to that shape of ferocious beauty.

There were two newly made graves in the cemetery, and drawn by some curious fascination he went and stood by them, and read the names on the small temporary wooden boards set up at the foot of each mound of raw earth: �James Bull, July 16th, 19���; �George Henry Whitelegg, July 16th, 19��.� Just a month ago. Poor chaps�no one would ever know why they had fallen either; they were alone, climbing guideless, when they were killed. There was nothing much wrong with the north-east face of the Weisshorn�it had been done at least four times before, and once by a girl of nineteen. Bull�well, one ought not to speak ill of the dead, but he was rather a nasty bit of work. Unscrupulous, jealous, touchy, always on the make, Allard thought with distaste; crabbing other climbers, puffing his own exploits, writing himself up. The best thing about him was his passion for mountaineering; but even that he sullied�everything turned to journalism at his touch. Poor young Whitelegg was quite under his spell�he had that power of dominating another person, almost of possessing them.

Sometimes one�s own thoughts give one a start. When Dr.�Allard got as far as �possessing them,� he pulled up short. No, he didn�t really mean that; not even of Bull. The word �possession� had for Dr.�Allard a perfectly definite technical meaning; that form of mental derangement when the personality is invaded by some alien intruder which, in its attempts at domination, wrecks the delicately adjusted mechanism of the human reason. He specialised in this little-studied branch of psychiatry; he had written a book about it.

As if his thoughts tired him, he sat down on a bench in the sun. His poor Rose! So eager, so beautiful, so good�and struck down, just six weeks before their wedding, by that appalling malady. He could never forget the days when, gentle and amiable as she still seemed, she had begun to look at him with the eyes of a stranger; that memory clung more hauntingly even than the shocking moment when she attacked him with demoniac fierceness. She had been certified, and died shortly after in an asylum, but she had turned Allard into a mental specialist. All his spare time had since been spent in investigating this special form of derangement. For years he had never come to Zermatt�he had met her here; but latterly he had begun to do so again�it was so long ago, and time blunts the edge of even the most passionate memories. This time, however, it had all been brought back to him vividly by the presence of that nice child, Phyllis Strangways. She reminded him strangely of Rose. Not in person�she was smaller, fairer; but in her ardent love of mountains and the beauty of mountains, her tireless enthusiasm for climbing them. They could never be still, she and that brother of hers; they must be doing something every day of their precious three weeks. Yesterday they had gone off, on his advice, to do the Bieshorn, the only thing which might conceivably be expected to go with these masses of new snow; their guides, the young Kaufmatters, were in his opinion rather too frivolous and reckless to be entrusted with such a pair of babes. Dr.�Allard had an almost tender feeling, half parental, half something more wistful, connected with memories of his own youth and another�s, about those two; he felt that they wanted looking after. And eagerly, sweetly, deferentially they accepted any advice he gave; they had even begun to come and seek it, and his company too.

He glanced at his watch. The 4.05 from Randa would just about be in; they ought to have caught it. He would go and see. Hoisting himself up out of his seat�this beastly rheumatic stiffness!�he left the cemetery.

He met them in the street. Yes, they had done the Bieshorn all right�a frightful plug, though, in all that snow. But he missed their usual accents of joyful enthusiasm. The girl looked tired, and rather white; she was unusually silent while he gave them tea at one of the little green tables. Something in her aspect troubled Dr.�Allard, and when she went in to have a bath he detained the boy. �Roger, what�s wrong with your sister?�

The boy frowned. It was that fool Christian. On the way down he had insisted on making a detour across the Bies-glacier to show them the place on the Weisshorn where the accident was a month ago�and that had upset her.

How like guides, Dr.�Allard thought, with their morbid love of horrors! Still, he was a little surprised at its having so much effect on her; she had seemed a person of considerable nervous stability. �I�m sorry, Roger,� he said. �Still, there was nothing to see, was there, after all this time, and this new snow?�

The boy said nothing�he still frowned, with a puzzled, uncertain look. �Roger, what is it?� Dr.�Allard asked him now. sharply.

�Well�.�.�. I think I�d better tell you, sir, though you�ll think us all fools,� said the boy, flushing at his tone. �As a matter of fact, we did see something. It was as we came away. We�d left the foot of the face, and got right out on to that flat snowfield that lies below it, when suddenly we came on tracks in the snow.� He stopped.

�Well, what of that?� said Dr.�Allard, a little testily. �Some other party might easily have been there. Where were they coming from?�

�That�s just it,� said Roger. �They weren�t coming from anywhere. They just began, right out in the open. We didn�t somehow notice at first how odd it was, and we followed them, because it was easier going. But then the guides began to talk between themselves, like they do, discussing how on earth those tracks could have begun just from nowhere, right out in that huge open space�and Phyl caught the drift of what they were saying, and just as they began to go downhill she turned all white and said to me: �Those are those men�s tracks!� And nothing would make her go that way any more.�

Dr.�Allard pulled at his pipe. �And what did the guides say?� he asked.

�Oh, Christian laughed and said: �Es war nur Spuren�; but he and Hans didn�t much like it either, because unless someone was dropped from an aeroplane, how could they begin like that? It was�.�.�. nasty,� said the boy, wriggling his shoulders, as if to throw off some oppression. �So we branched off to the left and came down the rocks by the side of the ice-fall, and back that way. But that�s what has upset Phyllis.�

Dr.�Allard pondered this information all the evening. When he had sent Roger off to change, he sought out the guides and questioned them. They confirmed Roger�s story in every particular; the footsteps had begun, quite suddenly, in the snow, right out in the flat open space below the N.E. face of the Weisshorn, as if the makers of them had dropped from a Flugmaschine. But the men were not at all anxious to talk about it, and from their rather foolish and giggling manner, more than from anything they actually said, he divined that they shared Roger�s discomfort about the whole matter. In fact, Hans and Christian Kaufmatter had got the wind up. That was the one thing which emerged clearly. Why, they would not or could not say.

After the children had gone to bed�Dr.�Allard always thought of them as children, though Phyllis was nearly twenty and the boy at least seventeen�the doctor strolled a little way up the valley road in the warm starlight, smoking. In front of him rose the Matterhorn; barely visible, a shadowy, almost transparent shape of sky-colour, which held no stars. He began to set the facts in order in his head. No aeroplane had crossed the valley, so Alois, the porter, said, �within the last thirty-six hours�since the last snow fell, in fact.� Therefore that explanation of the phenomenon was ruled out. But four people had seen it. Were they all four mistaken? Possibly�Dr.�Allard knew too much about hallucinations to exclude that possibility. But even if they were mistaken, the problem remained; four people experiencing the same hallucination, and all, though in varying degrees, feeling precisely the same sense of discomfort about it. Phyllis had felt it most, Roger next most�and Phyllis alone, he noted, had connected it with the two dead men. H�m. It wasn�t very nice, however you looked at it. He dallied with the thought of going up next day to the Bies-glacier, to see what was to be seen for himself, but on further consideration he decided against that plan. He would do better to stay with the children, keep them amused, and talk to Phyllis. He knew the importance, in any case of shock or disturbance, of making the person talk it out�suck the poison from the wound, as it were, and prevent an injury to the subconscious. He would get on to that in the morning.

Dr.�Allard had reason, next day, to be extremely glad that he had not gone off to the Bies-glacier, for the afternoon brought a fresh and far more disturbing shock. The morning passed quietly enough. He and Phyllis went for a stroll, into the meadows beyond the town�the hay was cut, but small bright flowers bloomed in the stubbly grass and on the ledges of the scattered rocks; the air was aromatic with thyme. Sitting in those sweet and peaceful surroundings, Dr.�Allard had his talk with the girl. It was not very satisfactory. Phyllis, to his surprise, took a rather superior line about herself. She had been tired; she must have been fanciful. No, she didn�t really mind it a bit now. It was odd, but it didn�t worry her, really, Dr.�Allard. This disconcerted the doctor a good deal. She would not come out into the open�and why wouldn�t she? There were two possible reasons�either that she really had got over the shock, and thought herself silly; or that she was so profoundly frightened that her mind was shying away from the subject. The latter was the more likely, but so long as she would not talk about it, he could not be positive; and more important, he could not help her.

All he could do was to keep the pair of them occupied, and with this end in view they went up to the little restaurant at the Corner Gorge for tea. Phyllis seemed really merry up there, which made the shock when it came all the greater. The post had come in when they got back, and Dr.�Allard took his letters from fat old Alois and sat on the wall with them; absorbed, he was vaguely conscious of the children sitting close by, chattering over their own mail, when he heard Roger say�.�.�. �What�s this card, Phyl? Who on earth is J.�Bull?�

The name hit the doctor at once, with a little sharp tap like a hammer. He looked up quickly at the pair. Phyllis was turning a picture postcard over in her fingers, with a puzzled look on her face. �I can�t imagine,� she said. �Stresa�.�.�. I don�t know anyone at Stresa; and I didn�t think I knew anyone called Bull. Why should he want to climb with us? And yet the name is familiar, somehow�I know I�ve seen it lately.�

Dr.�Allard got up and went over to them. �Some mistake?� he said�.�.�.� let me see, may I?� He did it all very gently and naturally, like a person moving up to a wild bird; whatever was on that card, he wanted to know it before Phyllis remembered where she had recently seen the name J.�Bull�on the wooden board at the foot of that new grave in the cemetery, where he himself had seen it, only yesterday. But even as he went to take the card from her, the girl�s face blanched; she put one hand over her mouth with a curious gesture, and stared at him with darkened eyes. �James Bull,� she said, almost in a whisper, from behind her hand, �he�.�.�. he was one of them!�

�My dear child, that�s got nothing to do with this postcard,� said Dr.�Allard, firmly and heartily. �Let me see it, will you?� She gave it to him, and he read it through. It was written in pencil, which came out rather faint on the glossy surface on the card, below a picture of Stresa. �George and I are making our way over to Zermatt, and hope to find you and your brother there. We mean to climb with you. Yours�.�.�. J.�Bull.� That was all. The doctor turned it over. It was addressed, correctly enough to Miss Phyllis Strangways, Hotel Mont-Rose, Zermatt, and bore the Stresa postmark of two days before; just one day, Dr.�Allard noted, before the children had seen those strange footsteps on the Bies-glacier. George�that was young Whitelegg�s name. It wasn�t very nice, it was a horrible practical joke to play on anyone. Before he could think of the next thing to say, young Roger of course must needs do the silliest thing he possibly could. �George Whitelegg was the other chap�s name, surely?� he blurted out.

Dr.�Allard had to control his irritation with the boy. �Yes, it was,� he said quietly and rather sternly, �and that shows that someone is playing a very stupid and heartless practical joke on your sister. I can�t conceive of anything in worse taste.� He turned to Phyllis, who still sat staring at him with those fixed and darkened eyes. �You�re sure you don�t know the writing?� he asked in a very everyday voice. �Look at it again.�

But neither Phyllis nor Roger could recognise the writing in the least. So Dr.�Allard took the card, promising to institute inquiries about the practical joker; he was so firm about this person that presently he saw the girl�s colour restored, and a more natural expression come into her face.

But his inquiries did not take the form that a listener to the foregoing conversation might have expected. It is true that he did, from the post-office, ring up the office of the small local journal which published the visitors� lists at Stresa, and ascertained that no one within the last week had registered in the name of Bull at any of the hotels or pensions there; he hardly expected to find that they had; but when the children were out of the way he went and looked up James Bull�s signature in the hotel register. Written with the usual deplorable Swiss nib, in the usual gluey hotel ink, it was mostly a purple blot, hardly legible, and quite useless for purposes of comparison with the faint pencilling on the postcard. He further ascertained at the bureau that Bull had paid his bill in notes, not by cheque. Finally he was driven to inquiries among the few English climbers in the hotel, as to whether any of them had known Bull well enough to recognise his writing. But none had�Bull was not generally popular. Dr.�Allard was obliged to admit himself stumped in this direction.

Next day they did a climb on the Riffelhorn. The children appeared to have swallowed the practical joke theory fairly easily, and if Dr.�Allard�s own thoughts took a rather darker turn he kept them to himself. Phyllis climbed well, and after a huge tea at the Riffel-alp they ran down the path through the pine woods in the usual happy spirits of descending mountaineers. At the door of the hotel Dr.�Allard met an old friend, just come in from traversing the Matterhorn, and stopped to exchange greetings with him�he was interrupted by Roger, who came out from the hall and touched his arm, with a disturbed face. �Could you come to Phyl a moment, sir? She�s had another.�

The doctor hurried in. Phyllis sat, white and frightened, on a chair at the foot of the stairs, holding a postcard. It bore the postmark of Ornavasso, and a similar message to the first; the date was twenty-four hours later. Dr.�Allard took the girl up to his room�the hall was full of people�and there talked to her. Now she did come out into the open; half crying, she admitted that she was frightened, and with just the same fear as she had felt on the Bies-glacier. �I don�t believe it is a joke�I believe it�s them. I have a feeling�I don�t quite know how�that they�re trying to get at me!� she said, staring at him with terrified eyes.

Dr.�Allard mixed her a sedative, and talked to her reassuringly. She mustn�t give way, he said, to those ideas; she must at least think of it as a practical joke, till they had proved whether it was or not. �Spirits don�t write postcards,� said Dr.�Allard. He gave her a new Tauchnitz novel and sent her to bed for supper�but he went down to dinner very ill-at-ease. No�spirits didn�t write postcards, but they did cause the hands of others to write them. He had seen that. It looked�well, to Dr.�Allard it looked very nasty indeed. �We mean to climb with you��what could that imply but a determination to climb most intimately with them, in their persons, possessing them? If, that is, it wasn�t a joke. And the doctor didn�t really believe it was. The whole thing hung together too well. Ornavasso was almost at the mouth of the Val Anzasca, which led up to Macugnaga and the Monte Moro�mountaineers would come that way if they came on foot. No, he didn�t like it�didn�t like it at all.

He took the only precaution he could�of telling Alois to keep all postcards for Miss Strangways and give them to him. So Phyllis escaped the one which arrived next day�from Bannio, as the doctor expected, half-way up the Val Anzasca, with a still more recent postmark. The day after that there wasn�t one�and he took the pair out step-cutting on the Findelen glacier. But on the afternoon of the fifth day, when they came in for tea after a walk, Alois, the porter handed the girl a note. A party, he said, had given it in on their way down from the Regina Margherita Hutte on Monte Rosa, an hour before. Phyllis opened it�turned white, and handed it to the doctor without a word. It bore the date of that very day, and contained only the words: �See you in Zermatt this evening.�.�.�. J.�B.�

Dr.�Allard�s first thought was to trace the bringers of the note. But here Alois could give little help. They were Italians, F�hrerlosen (guideless climbers)�they had handed in the note, asked the time of the next train to Visp, and gone on to the station, where a train actually left within half an hour. They would, it was clear, be gone some time since.

But these inquiries and considerations were soon cut short by concern for Phyllis�s state. Roger, very sensibly, had taken her up to her room; but he presently sent a chambermaid down to request the Herr Doktor�s presence immediately. Allard went up. The girl was sitting huddled in a chair, staring in front of her; she started violently at his entry, sprang up, and then stood, trembling all over. �They�ll get me,� she said, in a low vibrating voice; �they�ll be here to-night and they�ll get us.� Dr.�Allard spoke soothingly to her, putting his hand on her arm: �Phyllis, I will take care of you�you mustn�t get so excited.�

�You can�t�you can�t keep them off. They�ve been coming, and coming, and coming�and now they�ll be here�this evening!� she said, her voice rising almost to a scream. �Oh!� She sank down in the chair again, covering her face with her hands, while shudders shook her body.

Dr.�Allard was thoroughly alarmed. Whether there was any reality in the menace he feared, or whether it was merely a horrid practical joke, the effect on the girl was the same�she was nearly frantic. He began to fear for her reason�if this state of panic terror went on, anything might happen. In such cases argument, he knew, was useless; the only chance was some definite action which would relieve the tension. He took a sudden resolution.

�Roger, go and get hold of Franz and Christian and tell them to be ready to start the moment after tea,� he said decisively. �And tell Marie to put up some food for tomorrow. We�re going up to the Trift to do a climb.� The boy ran off and the man put his hand firmly on the girl�s shoulder. �Phyllis!� he said. She looked up, and he held her eyes with his, steadily�a trick he had long since learned to use in his piteous profession.

�Listen to me, Phyllis,� he said. �If anyone does comes, they won�t find us here. We�re going up to the Trift for the night, and if the weather holds we�ll traverse the Rothhorn to-morrow, to the Mountet hut.� He saw that he had caught her attention�she had heard; she was taking in his meaning, and the trembling lessened. He went on, pursuing his advantage. �As for all this business, it�s very nasty and mysterious, my dear; but if you will trust me, and do exactly what I tell you, I will keep you safe, you two. Do you understand?�

�Yes,� she said faintly, but a little more naturally.

�That�s right,� he said. �I can take care of you, if you will obey me�but you must do what I say. Now, put your things together for two or three days�we might even go over the Dent Blanche, if the weather is good and you don�t get too tired. Have you got spare unders? and your woollies? Well, put them all in, and then come down and have tea, and we�ll start the moment after.�

He waited, while she began to collect her effects in heaps on the bed�asking her where her rucksack was, commenting on items of her outfit, keeping her attention on these practical details, till Roger came back. �When you�ve done your things, help Roger with his,� he said, and grasped the boy�s arm till he winced, to check his protest. The boy, startled, looked at him and understood, thank goodness. �Try and be down in ten minutes,� he said, and left them.

Walking up through the narrow gorge which leads to the Trift Hut, after tea, Dr.�Allard took the opportunity of having a talk to Roger. He had got hold of old Franz, his leading guide, and put a little of the situation to him. The Fr�ulein, he explained, had got an id�e fixe as the result of being taken to the scene of the accident�it was very unfortunate, but these things did happen. �Ja-Ja��Franz nodded acceptance of the statement. It was therefore most important to keep her mind occupied, Dr.�Allard pursued, and he, Franz, was to come up to her on the path and enter into conversation with her, and keep her talking. But he was not to mention accidents, or death, or Gespenster (ghosts), or any such thing�nor Herr Whitelegg, or Herr Bull, naturally. �Ja-Ja��Franz nodded again. (His style, Dr.�Allard reflected, would be greatly cramped by cutting out two of the Swiss guides� favourite topics; but Franz was an old friend, and absolutely trustworthy.)

So while Franz amused the young lady with anecdotes of Wills and Whymper, Davidson and Coolidge, Dr.�Allard talked to Roger. He wanted to ascertain what Roger himself felt about the whole business�worried as he had been over Phyllis, he had given little thought to the boy; besides, he could be a most useful ally in dealing with his sister, if he could be got to grasp the situation. The doctor was careful to begin by being very medical, explaining the danger to Phyllis�s mind and nerves involved in the strain of such terrors; the importance of keeping her attention occupied, and of not leaving her alone. (He remembered that point afterwards.) On what justification there might be for her fears he did not touch, at first. But Roger did. After listening thoughtfully to Dr.�Allard�s injunctions, he put a question on his own account: �Phyl thinks�she�s convinced�that those men want to go on climbing, and haven�t bodies to climb with now, and want to use ours. That seems pretty fantastic, but��he paused��is it possible, sir?�

Dr.�Allard chose his words carefully before replying. There was a form of mental illness, he said, for which the word �possession� was used; but generally it was, so to speak, by some attribute of personality, like violence or cruelty, rather than by a whole personality itself, that the sufferer was enslaved. �And even then we are guessing, really; judging the cause by the effects.�

�So you don�t think it possible?� the boy said, looking at him.

Dr.�Allard stopped, and took off his grey felt hat. They had emerged from the gorge, and the open upper valley where the Trift Hut stands, lay spread out before them, the mountains round it catching the last sunlight; a cool wind off the snow touched his damp forehead gratefully.

�I simply don�t know,� he said at length, returning the boy�s look, steadily, with his grey eyes under the jutting brows. �All I can say is that in a lifetime on this job I have never known a case of direct possession by a personality newly dead.� He wiped his forehead�finding those words and saying them had made him as hot as the steep pull up through the gorge. But Roger seemed satisfied. �Good!� he said.

�Are you frightened at all, Roger?� the doctor then asked.

The boy in his turn paused before replying. The doctor saw him look at his sister�s figure, slender and trim in breeches and shirt, walking lightly across the rough valley ahead of them beside old Franz�then he ran his eyes round that group of noble and lovely mountain-shapes enclosing the valley. �Not much,� he said at length, �.�.�.�apart from Phyl, that is. And not so much up here. It was getting rather beastly down there��he nodded towards the Zermatt valley over his shoulder��but I always feel safe among these chaps�; he swept a hand round the circle of mountains.

The Trift hut is really a small inn, stone-built, with bedrooms and a salle � manger, and quarters for the guides. There the had party supper�the usual Maggi soup, thickened with cheese; coarse bread, stringy veal, and compote. Soon afterwards the doctor sent the children off to bed. He gave each of them a strong sleeping-draught, and went in, paternally, to tuck them up. Drowsy with the Dial, Phyllis smiled at him from her pillow. �Sleep well, child,� the doctor muttered, stirred by the childish face. �I�ll take care of you.� And went out.

But he did not go to bed. He had a curious feeling that he would be better awake and on the watch that night. One by one the few other climbers went off to bed and the doctor remained alone in the little salle � manger, propped in a wicker chair. He had a book, but he did not read; he would reserve that till he began to feel sleepy. Instead, he ran over the affair in his mind from the beginning. That matter of the writing was curious. The doctor took out a pocket-book and extracted from it three postcards, a note, and a letter; he spread them on the bare wooden table and examined them. Oddly enough old Morrison, the friend who had turned up after traversing the Matterhorn the other day, had been in correspondence with Bull on some debated point of topography, and had actually had a letter of his by him�it was this which the doctor now compared with the three postcards and the note which had been sent to Phyllis. No�the writings were not really the same; and yet there was a likeness�just the sort of likeness you would expect if someone was trying to imitate a handwriting, under whatever compulsion. It was rather uncanny. And why had that phrase, �under whatever compulsion,� suddenly come into his mind in connection with it? No�the more he looked at it, the less he liked it. The door rattled suddenly; the doctor started, rose up, went and opened it. There was no one there�the moon was rising behind the inn, and its light just touched the summits of the Wellen-kuppe and the Gabelhorn, opposite, with silver; from the gorge below rose the strong voice of the stream. Peaceful and still the valley lay; Dr.�Allard remembered the boy�s remark about the mountains. Soothed, he went in again, shutting the door. His thoughts now ran on Phyllis and her symptoms; poor child, if this expedient failed she would be in poor case. That huddled staring which his entrance had interrupted in her room at Zermatt had frightened the doctor more even than her trembling and her cries; it was a bad sign. He thought of Rose, his lost Rose; so she too had sat, with far less apparent reason, nerveless, sunk together, gazing before her. Eh dear! how that child�s face brought it all back. A bad business�a horrid business. Were they asleep, he wondered? Removing his old leather slippers the doctor stole upstairs and peeped into each room. Yes�sleeping sweetly, the pair of them. He went down again. But his anxiety returned, and remained with him all night. The shutters outside the windows, the door, the stairs, made faint sounds, creaked, and were still. And ever and again, more stiffly each time, at some particularly loud and alarming sound, Dr.�Allard hoisted himself out of his chair and crept upstairs to listen outside the children�s room; or went to the hut door, opened it noiselessly, and looked out. But ever and again, nothing was to be seen save the grey shape of the moraine in the shadowed empty valley, and the mountains white under the moon.

The traverse of the Zinal Rothhorn is one of the pleasantest climbs round Zermatt. The peak itself stands, like a great canine tooth of reddish rock, on the high ridge forming the watershed between the Val d�Anniviers and the Zermatt valley�a watershed which runs almost throughout its length above the snow-line. The Rothhorn cannot compare for beauty with its neighbour the Weisshorn, that lovely pyramid whose exquisite outline is so completely satisfying from all sides; but it has a splendour of its own, a tilted curve, at the summit, as of a breaking wave�so that he who will may fling his prune-stones between his boots sheer down to the snow hundreds of feet below. The ascent on the Zermatt side is on the whole easy: a walk up the Trift valley to the little glacier-fed tarn at its head, a long weary grind up the Trift-glacier moraine�that curious geological formation, long and curved as a snake and pointed as a roof, into which the fallen stones from the surfaces of glaciers are loosely piled up; on and upwards over the easy snow-slopes above, bearing always to the right, till at last�how thankfully!�the climber takes to the rocks. This first part of the climb is what Roger called �a plug��the rest is pure pleasure. Above the first easy rocks a snowy ridge leads upwards till it merges into the steep slabs of the final peak; slabs of hard red rock, sound and firm, so that the smallest holds for toes or fingers give a sense of absolute security.

Up this route the party from the Trift inn made their way next morning. It was dark when they started at 3 a.m., and the lights from the lanterns carried by the guides winked like a procession of wandering stars as they plodded up the faint path and floundered painfully over the loose stones of the moraine. It was warm�a thing not only unpleasant in itself, but ominous as indicating a change in the weather; climbers like a cold air at dawn. Dr.�Allard perspired freely. At the foot of the rocks they halted to put on the rope; the breather was welcome to the doctor, who found that a �white night� in a wicker chair is not a helpful preliminary to a first-class expedition. The sun by now had risen, and they were already high enough to look out southward over the peaks beyond the Zermatt valley; they glowed a furious rose, beautiful to see but threatening for the future; the guides spat and muttered at the sight. The Matterhorn was visible, looming up over the gap in the ridge between the Ober- and Unter-Gabelh�rner; distinct, among so many others, by something wild, almost savage, about its shape. Refreshed by a good night, the children were in tolerable spirits; Phyllis had made a poor breakfast down at the inn, but Dr.�Allard saw her munch biscuits and chocolate with alacrity while she identified the various summits and discussed the ways up them.

And how she loved climbing! Long afterwards Dr.�Allard was to remember her happiness that day on the Rothhorn. For after they had roped up and proceeded on their way, up the rocks and along the snow ar�te, she seemed to forget all her fears, and her spirits to mount within her as her body, triumphing over gravitation, mounted towards that sky of intensest blue overhead. When they reached the steep rocks of the final peak, she went up the slabs like a cat�hardy, fearless, and strong; pausing in some exposed and airy situation, where ordinary people are wont to cling with concentrated attention to their holds, to look back at the doctor, and call down some gay remark or a question. Old Franz was delighted with her, and exchanged flattering remarks on her performance with the Kaufmatters in guttural Swiss. On the top, when they reached it at 10.30�slow time, but Dr.�Allard was no longer so fast as he had been�she sat in a trance of rapture, right on the edge of the overhanging drop, her feet dangling gaily into several hundred feet of blue air, eating her lunch and gazing at the view. Dr.�Allard�s hopes rose; it really seemed as if his expedient had succeeded beyond expectation. If only they could keep it up�not return to Zermatt at all, perhaps, but go on to Zinal or Arolla, letting their luggage follow them. He set off for the descent in spirits almost as high as Phyllis�s own.

The descent from the Rothhorn to the Mountet hut is at no time such a simple matter as the ascent from the Trift. Three large towers of rock, known to climbers as gendarmes, block the ridge and must be carefully negotiated. The third and largest of these is rather a teaser: a steep and very exposed wall of rock, straddling the narrow ridge below it; cracks in the surface of the slabs afford the only hand- and foot-hold. It is a place needing care and a good head even when the conditions are good, and on this occasion they were not good. The party were now on the north side of the mountain, and whereas on the southern side the rocks had been warm and dry, here on the northern ridge snow and even ice still lingered in all the interstices�the cracks on the great gendarme were plastered with them, making the negotiation of the steep face a matter of extreme difficulty. They had to unrope, and using one of the ropes, looped round a point of rock, as an extra handhold, go down one at a time, after old Franz, with much swearing and scuffling, had been lowered and cleared the cracks as well as he could. All this delayed them considerably, and it was 3 p.m., four hours after they had left the summit, before they were all reassembled on the ridge at the foot of the gendarme. By this time the weather was becoming a source of anxiety. The threat of that warm wind at daybreak, that rosy flush at sunrise, seemed about to be fulfilled�clouds were gathering to the south, behind them, and puffs of grey vapour were beginning to boil through the wide gap in the ridge between the Rothhorn and the Weisshorn. The guides, as usual when bad weather threatens, became nervous and fidgety, and wanted to hurry on down; but Dr.�Allard, to whom Phyllis�s health was an over-riding consideration, insisted on a pause and a little food as soon as they should reach a suitable place.

They took it, perched as and where they could find room on both sides of the ridge; it so happened that Dr.�Allard and Franz alone were on the west side�the other three guides and the two children were on the opposite side, looking out towards the Weisshorn. The valley in which the Mountet hut stands still lay in sunshine, a vast expanse of dazzling snow, narrowing on the north where the Durand glacier, hidden by the slope of the Besso, swept round the corner to flow down the Val d�Anniviers; Dr.�Allard could see the hut at the foot of this slope, just above the moraine. Studying the surface of the glaciers with the automatic care of the mountaineer, the doctor�s eye was caught by something�some tracks in the snow below them, leading in the direction of the hut. There was nothing unusual in this�the ordinary route off the ridge down to the Mountet would strike the glacier about where the tracks were visible, but he could not see quite where they came from. He took his field-glasses out of his rucksack, focused them, and began to examine the tracks.

What he saw made him start so violently that the leather case of the glasses, which he had carelessly laid on his knee instead of slinging it round his neck by the strap, fell, and went clattering down the rocks to the glacier below. The footprints were indeed going towards the hut, well out on the open snow, clear of the rocks and in plain sight�but no other tracks led from the foot of the rocks towards them! As those others on the Bies-glacier had done, they began, impossibly, out on the open glacier, coming from nowhere.

For a moment Dr.�Allard felt almost physically sick when he saw that ominous sight through his glasses. But he pulled himself together at once, and took a hurried decision on the next thing to be done. As luck would have it, seated on the farther side of the ridge, Phyllis and Roger had not seen the tracks, and at all costs they must, if possible, be prevented from seeing them. The loss of the case created a certain amount of fuss, of which the doctor made the most; it also furnished him with an excellent excuse for changing the route of their descent, leaving the ridge earlier than usual, so that they would strike the glacier at a considerable distance from the unaccountable start of those beastly footprints. He did not much like the idea of crossing them, as they would have to do to reach the hut, but there was nothing else to be done; there was no other shelter within reach, and even as they re-roped and started down the rocks, snow began to fall.

They climbed down easily enough, retrieved the case, and set out across the glacier. But even as Dr.�Allard feared, Phyllis�s mood suddenly changed; she crossed the tracks themselves without comment, but she grew first listless, then uneasy�was silent even when addressed, and occasionally glanced behind her. These signs knocked cold on the doctor�s heart. He treated them as fatigue; on reaching the hut, in snow now falling thickly, he gave her a hot brandy before supper, and sent her off to bed immediately afterwards. But her symptoms of distress increased, and with them the doctor�s despair�oh God, what could he do?

What he could do, he did. The Mountet hut has two stories, the upper reached by a sort of ladder-like stair. Here he put Phyllis and Roger to sleep; he took occasion to remind the boy not to leave her alone, and gave Phyllis an even stronger sleeping-draught than the night before. Then he went downstairs. On the straw-filled bunks the guides lay, snoring already; Dr.�Allard stoked up the stove, drew a chair close to it, and once more settled down to keep watch. Outside, when he took a last look from the door, the snow was still falling, thickly and silently.

But Dr.�Allard had had a long, stiff day�s climbing, and this was his second night of watching. The warmth of the stove was soothing; he nodded drowsily. Time after time he jerked himself upright, only to nod again; and at last, overcome, he fell asleep.

He was awakened by a feeling of cold, and a sense of light near him. He started up, looking confusedly round. No wonder it was cold�the door stood wide open; outside the snow had ceased, and bright moonlight was pouring, with the keen night air, into the hut.

Dr.�Allard glanced at his watch. It was half past two. He went to the door and looked out. Footprints�smallish footprints�led away from it in the smooth newly fallen snow, down over the rough slope towards the glacier. Full of foreboding, he turned back into the hut and climbed the ladder to the upper room. It was as he feared�the straw-filled sleeping-shelf was empty, the dark fusty blankets flung aside in two tumbled heaps. The children were gone.

Cursing himself for his wretched drowsiness, his unpardonable lack of self-control, Dr.�Allard bundled down the ladder again. Hurriedly he roused the four guides; with muttered grunts, of which the doctor caught more of the sense than the guides realised, the men tumbled up, pulled on their boots, their jackets; collected the ropes and the ice-axes, and fitted new candles into the lanterns. Lacing up his own boots, his back aching with stiffness, Dr.�Allard listened to them. Those tracks yesterday had not escaped the notice of the Kaufmatters anyhow, and whatever form their discomfort took, they had managed to communicate it to Franz and Peter. The Kaufmatters were Grindelwalders and Lutherans, but the Catholic Franz crossed himself as he stepped over the threshold and into the cold bright moonlight outside.

The tracks led down to the edge of the glacier and out across it in a southerly direction. In the clear moonlight there was no difficulty about following them in the freshly fallen snow, and the five men moved forward at a brisk pace. Dr.�Allard�s mind was moving even faster than his legs. How on earth the pair could have managed to climb down the ladder, put on their boots, open the door, and leave without rousing anyone, was a mystery�though he reflected presently that none of the guides had heard him go up and down the ladder; they were fast asleep when he roused them up. And what impulse had led the children to leave the hut? Was it flight, or some strong enticement? And where were they making for? Anxiety filled him�farther up the glacier, under the Gabelhorn and the Rudihorn, crevasses might be expected, and they appeared to have taken no rope. Clear as the moonlight was for things near at hand, it was deceptive for distances; peer as he would, he could see no sign of any living thing on the white reaches ahead. And how long a start they had, he had no idea.

Suddenly Christian Kaufmatter, who was leading, stopped dead with a prodigious and startled oath. The rest, coming up to him, halted too. So far there had been just the one set of tracks, with an occasional longer or shorter step showing that two people, not one, had passed that way�but when Dr.�Allard came up to where Christian and the rest had halted, he saw that two more sets of footprints had appeared suddenly, one on each side of those which they had been following. The fresh prints did not approach the track�they just began there, suddenly. For a moment the group of men stood staring�then Franz crossed himself again, and suddenly young Hans Kaufmatter began to whisper. For some reason the horror of that moment was complete. With an effort the doctor roused himself��Vorw�rts! Schnell!� At first the guides were so demoralised that he actually had some difficulty in forcing them to go on along that unholy triple track; they walked well to one side of it, and in spite of all his urgings, not quite so quickly as before.

Presently the moon went down, and behind them dawn began to break. As the light grew stronger Christian, who was now going second, immediately behind Dr.�Allard, gave another exclamation. Dr.�Allard stopped. Christian came up to him and pointed towards the slopes of the Rudihorn ahead of them. On a snowy ridge two small black figures were visible, moving swiftly upwards. Dr.�Allard took out his Zeiss glasses. Yes, sure enough, it was Phyllis and Roger, climbing unroped. But through the glasses the doctor could see something which filled him with fresh dismay. The pair were climbing terribly fast, and though there was no one else in sight, they constantly looked back over their shoulders, as if pursued, and then hurried on faster than before. The ridge of the Rudihorn was no place for such reckless speed; even where the children were climbing, it called for care, with the rocks smothered as they were in new snow; higher up it steepened considerably, till eventually the angle became altogether impracticable. And what would they do then in their desperate flight? For that it was a flight from some unseen pursuit the doctor was now certain.

But the sight of the children themselves seemed to have driven away the guides� fear. They shouted and whistled to them; there was no reply, and they then set off in pursuit, crossing the glacier at prodigious speed. The Kaufmatters and Peter soon forged ahead�Franz and Dr.�Allard could not keep pace with them, but followed as fast as they could. No words were needed; it was clear that the Kaufmatters were determined to catch up their truant patrons. Soon they, followed by Dr.�Allard and Franz, were close in under the lower slopes of the Rudihorn; the children at the same time began to move more slowly, the steepness of the going hindering their progress. Now, suddenly, the pair left the ridge, and still with those terrible backward glances, scrambled helter-skelter down into a snow-couloir or gully, crossed it, and traversed out on to a snow-slope on the farther side. Up this they began to race again. But owing to this change of direction, their visible pursuers, the guides, had gained on them; and though high up, they were now not far away in level distance, from where Franz and Dr.�Allard stood. The two older men shouted to them till the rocks echoed, but it was as if they had no ears; they paid not the smallest attention, but kept on their desperate course. And how desperate that course was, Dr.�Allard could now see clearly. The snow-slope up which they were moving abutted at the top against a blue wall of ice, and on the right sank with appalling steepness into the upper part of the couloir which they had just crossed lower down; on the left it ended abruptly in a cornice�that curious formation, curved out over space like the crest of a wave, into which the wind often moulds the snow. When they reached the top of the slope they would find themselves completely cut off. And in their state of panic, what would they do then?

But the Kaufmatters had evidently grasped the situation too. Cutting left-handed across the glacier, so as to lessen the distance, they took to the rocks below the snow-slope and started directly up them, with the obvious intention of trying to intercept the pair before they reached either the cornice or the ice-wall. They were climbing at terrific speed, and unroped, to increase their freedom of movement�even in that moment of desperate anxiety Dr.�Allard noted their superb skill; Christian Kaufmatter, moving fast on difficult rocks, was a beautiful sight. Franz and the doctor now halted�there was nothing they could do, and Dr.�Allard was pretty well exhausted as it was by crossing the glacier at such speed in the deep soft snow. They stood where they were, watching that horrible race. The guides� speed was astonishing, but the children were going up the slope as if their feet were winged. Now, instead of only looking back, Dr.�Allard saw through his glasses that they were looking ahead too, and must have noticed the ice-wall above them, cutting off their escape, for they checked for a moment, and glanced wildly to right and left. They chose the left, and started off diagonally across the slope towards the cornice. This sudden move lessened the guides� chances of intercepting them in time; as the seconds passed. Dr.�Allard saw, with sickened certainty, that with all Christian�s matchless skill he must be too late. And now, despairingly, the doctor shouted at them: �Phyllis! Roger! Stop!��.�.�. shouted till he was hoarse, calling their names, calling on Heaven, calling their names again. Once old Franz heard him cry the name �Rose!� in tones of agony and desperation.

But it was all of no use. Swiftly as Christian climbed�he was close behind them now�the two terrified creatures went faster still. Now, if they had only looked back, they might have seen a familiar face and found safety; but they went on. They reached the cornice and started to go up it, several feet from the edge, but unaware�if they had wits left to be aware of anything�that the solid-seeming snow under their feet overhung empty space. And still, though almost voicelessly now, the doctor cried to them. There was suddenly a curious cracking sound, as a great piece of the cornice gave way under the small extra weight, the vibration of those light hurrying feet�and then a moment of utter silence before the huge mass of falling ice and snow plunged on to the rocks below, to come roaring and thundering down, a white river of leaping blocks and foam-like snow-dust, almost to the doctor�s very feet.

It was evening before they got them dug out, with the help of relief parties from Zinal; but the doctor would not leave the scene of operations for a moment till the two stretchers were on their way down the glacier, the centre of a silent and weary procession. They took them right on to Zinal, the last part of the way by lantern-light, and lodged them in the church; nor would the doctor take food or rest till he had arranged with the old priest that the latter should watch with them all through the night.

Dr.�Allard�s fellow-climbers speculated a good deal, both at the time and afterwards, as to why he should have been so insistent with the Strangways family that the two victims of that odd accident on the Rudihorn should not be buried either in Zinal or Zermatt; and actually insisted on bearing the whole cost of having the two coffins taken back to England, to lie in the quiet Sussex churchyard, under the yews and looking towards the Downs. They could not know, of course, how often he saw a sleepy childish face smile up at him from a coarse pillow, trustfully, and heard his own voice saying: �Sleep well, child; I�ll take care of you.� The guides did not know that either. But they did not speculate about his reasons. They knew.

I had not slept. It may have been the noise which prevented me. The entire ship groaned, creaked, screamed, and sobbed. In the staterooms near mine the flooring was being torn up, and somebody was busy with a very blunt saw just over my head�at least it sounded like that. The motion, too, was not favourable for sleep. There was nothing but strong personal magnetism to keep me in my bunk. If I had relaxed it for a moment, I should have fallen out.

Then the big trunk under my berth began to be busy, and I switched on the light to look at it. In a slow and portly way it began to lollop across the floor towards the door. It was trying to get out of the ship, and I never blamed it. But before it could reach the door, a suitcase dashed out from under the couch and kicked it in the stomach. I switched off the light again, and let them fight it out in the dark.

I recalled that an elderly pessimist in the smoking-room the night before had expressed his belief that we were overloaded and that if the ship met any heavy weather she�d break in two for sure. And then I was playing chess with a fat Negress who said she was only black when she was playing the black pieces; but in the middle of it somebody knocked and said that my bath was ready.

The last part turned out to be true. My bath was even more than ready, it was impatient; as I entered the bathroom the water jumped out to meet me and did so. Then, when the bath and I had finished with each other, my steward came slanting down the passage, at an angle of thirty degrees to the floor, without spilling my morning tea, and said that the weather was improving.

There were very few early risers at breakfast that morning, but I was not the first. Mrs.�Derrison was coming out as I entered the saloon. I thought she looked ill, but it was not particularly surprising. We said good morning, and then she hesitated for a moment.

�I want to speak to you,� she said. �Do you mind? Not now. Come up on deck when you�ve finished breakfast.�

She was not an experienced traveller, and had already consulted me about various small matters. I supposed she wanted to know what was the right tip for a stewardess or something of that kind. Accordingly, after breakfast I went up, and found her wrapped in furs�very expensive furs�in her deck-chair. I could see now that she was not in the least sea-sick, but she said she had not slept all night. I moved her chair into a better position, and chatted as I wrapped the rug round her. I confessed that with the exception of an hour�s nightmare about a fat Negress I also had not slept. As a rule, she would have smiled at this, for she smiled easily and readily. But now she stared out over the sea as if she had heard the words without understanding them. She was a woman of thirty-four or thirty-five, I should think and had what is generally called an interesting face. You noticed her eyes particularly.

�Well,� I said, �the wind�s dropping and we shall all sleep better to-night. Look, there�s the sun coming out at last. And now, what�s the trouble? What can I do for you?�

�I don�t think that even you can help,� she said drearily, �though you�ve done lots of kind things for me. Still I�ve got to tell somebody. I simply can�t stand it alone. Oh, if I were only the captain of this ship!�

�I don�t think you�d like it! Why, what would you do?�

�Turn round and go back to New York.�

�It couldn�t be done. The ship doesn�t carry enough coal. And we shall be at Liverpool the morning after next. But why? What�s the matter?�

She held out one hand in the sunlight. It looked very small and transparent. It shook.

�The matter is that I�m frightened. Tm simply frightened out of my life.�

I looked hard at her. There was no doubt about it. She was a badly-frightened woman. I resisted an impulse to pat her on the shoulder.

�But really, Mrs.�Derrison, if you�ll forgive me for saying so, this is absolute nonsense. The boat�s slower than she ought to be, and I�ll admit that she rolls pretty badly, but she�s as safe as a church all the same.�

�Yes, I know. In any case, that is not the kind of thing that would frighten me. This, is something quite different. And when I have told you it, you will probably think that I am insane.�

�No,� I said, �I shall not think that.�

�Very well. I told you that I was a widow. I wear no mourning, and I did not tell you that Alec, my husband, died only three months ago. Nor did I tell you, which is also the truth, that I am going to England in order to marry another man.�

�I understand all that. Go on.�

�Alec died three months ago. But he is on this boat. I saw him last night. I think he has come for me.�

She made that amazing statement quietly and without excitement. But you cannot tell a ghost-story convincingly to a man who is sitting in the sun at half past nine in the morning. I neither doubted her sincerity nor her sanity. I merely wondered how the illusion had been produced.

�Well,� I said, �you know that�s quite impossible, don�t you?�

�Yesterday, I should have said so.�

�So you will to-morrow. Tell me how it happened, and I will tell you the explanation.�

�I went to my room at eleven last night. The door was a little way open�fixed by that hook arrangement�the way I generally leave it. I switched on the light and went in. He was sitting on the berth with his legs dangling, his profile towards me. The light shone on the bald patch on his head. He wore blue pyjamas and red slippers�the kind that he always wore. The pocket of the coat was weighed down, and I remembered what he had told me�that when he was travelling he put his watch, money, and keys there at night. He turned his head towards me. It came round very slowly, as if with an effort. That was strange, because, so far, I had been startled and surprised, but not frightened. When the head turned round, I became really frightened. You see, it was Alec�and yet it was not.�

�I don�t think I understand. How do you mean?�

�Well, it was like him�a roundish face, clean-shaven, heavily lined�he was fifteen years older than I was�with his very heavy eyebrows and his ridiculously small mouth. His mouth was really abnormal. But the whole thing looked as if it had been modelled out of wax and painted. And, then, when a head turns towards you, you expect the eyes to look at you. These did not. They remained with the lids half down�very much as I remembered him after the doctors had gone. Oh, I was frightened! I fumbled with one hand behind me, trying to find the bell-push. And yet I could not help speaking out loud. I said: �What does this mean, Alec?� Just then I got my finger on the bell-push. He knew I had rung�I could see that. His lips kept opening and shutting as if he were trying hard to speak. When the voice came at last, it was only a whisper. He said: �I want you!� Then the stewardess tapped at the door, and I did not see him any more.�

�Did you tell the stewardess?�

�Oh, no! I did not mean to tell anybody then. I pretended to be nervous about the ship rolling too much, and managed to keep her with me for a long time. She offered to fetch the doctor for me, so that I could ask him for a sleeping-draught, but I wouldn�t have that.�

�Why not?�

�I was afraid to go to sleep. I wanted to be ready in case�in case it happened again. You see, I knew why it was.�

�I don�t think you did, Mrs.�Derrison. But I will tell you why it was, if you like. The explanation is very simple and also very prosaic.�

�What is it?�

�The cause of the illusion was merely sea-sickness.�

�But I�ve not felt ill at all.�

�Very likely not. If you had been ill in the ordinary way, the way in which it has taken a good many of our friends, you would never have had the illusion. Brain and stomach act and react on one another. The motion of the boat, too, is particularly trying to the optic nerves. In some cases, not very common perhaps, but quite well-known and recognised�it is the brain and not the other organ which is temporarily affected.�

I do not know anything about it really, and had merely invented the sea-sickness theory on the spur of the moment. It was necessary to think of something plausible and very commonplace. Mrs.�Derrison was suffering a good deal, and I had to stop it.

�If I could only think that,� she said, �what a comfort it would be!�

�Whether you believe it or not, it�s the truth,� I said. �I�ve known a similar case. It won�t happen to you again, because the weather�s getting better, and so you won�t be ill.�

She wanted to know all about the �similar case,� and I made up a convincing little story about it. Gradually, she began to be reassured.

�I wish I had known about it before,� she said. �All last night I sat in my room, with the light turned on, getting more and more frightened. I don�t think there�s anything hurts one so much as fear. I can understand people being driven mad by it. You see, I had a special reason to be afraid, because Alec was jealous, very jealous. He had even, I suppose, some grounds for jealousy.�

She began to tell me her story. She had married Alec Derrison nine years before. She liked him at that time, but she did not love him, and she told him so. He said that it did not matter, and that in time she would come to love him. I dare say a good many marriages that begin in that way turn out happily, but this marriage was a mistake.

He took her to his house in New York, and there they lived for a year without actual disaster. He was very kind to her, and she was touched by his kindness. She had been quite poor, and she now had plenty of money to spend, and liked it. But it became clear to her in that year not only that she did not love her husband, but that she never would love him. And she was, I could believe, a rather romantic and temperamental kind of woman by whom many men were greatly attracted. Alec Derrison began to be very jealous�at that time quite absurdly and without reason.

At the end of the year Derrison took her to Europe for a holiday. And there, in England, in her father�s country rectory, she met the man whom she ought to have married�an artist of the same age as herself. The two fell desperately in love with one another. The man wanted to take her away with him and ultimately to marry her. She refused.

There is a curious mixture of conscience and temperament which is sometimes mistaken for cowardice, and is often accompanied by extraordinary courage. She went to her husband and, so to speak, put her cards down on the table. �I love another man,� she said. �I love him in the way in which I wished to love you but cannot. I did not want this and I did not look for it, but it has happened to me. I am sorry it has happened, but I do not ask you to forgive me, for you have nothing to forgive. I want to know what you mean to do.�

His answer was to take her straight back to New York. There for eight years before he died he treated her with kindness and gave her every luxury, but all the time he had her watched. Traps were laid for her, but in vain. He had for business reasons to go to England every year, but he never took her with him. When he was away, two of his sisters came to the house and watched for him.

And yet, because in some things a woman is cleverer than a man, and also because the feminine conscience always has its limitations, during the whole of those eight years she corresponded regularly with the other man without being found out. They never met, but she had his letters. And now she was going back to marry him.

It was, perhaps, a little curious that she should tell all this to a man whom she had known only for a few days. But intimacies grow quickly on board ship, and besides she wanted to explain her terror.

�You see how it was,� she said. �If a dead man could come back again, then certainly he would come back. And when one begins to be frightened the fear grows and grows. One thinks of things. For instance, he crossed more than once in this very boat�I thought of that.�

�Well, Mrs.�Derrison,� I said, �the dead cannot and do not come back. But a disordered interior does sometimes produce an optical illusion. That�s all there is to it. However, if you like, I�ll go to the purser and get your room changed for another; I can manage that all right.�

It was not a very wise suggestion, and she refused it. She said that it would be like admitting that there was something in it beyond sea-sickness.

�Good!� I said. �I think you�re quite right. I thought it might ease your mind not to see again the room where you were frightened, but it is much better to be firm about it. In fact, you had better take a cup of soup and then go back to your room now, and get an hour�s sleep before lunch.�

�I wonder if I could.�

�Of course you can. You�re getting your colour back, and there�s much less motion on the boat. You won�t have another attack. You�ve had a sort of suppressed form of sea-sickness, that�s all. And I can quite understand that it scared you at the time, when you didn�t know; but there�s no reason why it should scare you now when you do know.�

She took my advice. A woman will generally take advice from any man except her husband�because he�s the only man she really knows. She was disproportionately grateful. Gratitude is rare but, when found, it is in very large streaks. She had also decided to believe that I knew everything, could do everything, and had other admirable qualities. When a woman decides to believe, facts do not hamper her.

She was much better at lunch and afterwards. Next day she was apparently normal, and was taking part in the usual deck-games. I began to think that my sea-sickness theory might have been a lucky shot. I consulted the ship�s doctor about it, without giving him names or details, but he was very non-committal. He was a general practitioner, of course, and I was taking him into the specialist regions. Besides, naturally enough, a doctor does not care to talk his own shop with a layman. He gave me an impression that any conclusions to which I came would necessarily be wrong. But it did not worry me much. I did not see a great deal of Mrs.�Derrison, but it was quite obvious that she had recovered her normal health and spirits. I believed that the trouble was over.

But it was not.

On the night before we arrived, after the smoking-room had been closed, old Bartlett asked me to come to his rooms for a chat and a whisky-and-soda. The old man slept badly, and was inclined to a late sitting. We discussed various subjects, and amongst them memory for faces.

�I�ve got that memory,� he said. �Names bother me, but not faces. For instance, I remember the faces of the seventy or eighty in the first-class here.�

�I thought we were more than that.�

�No. People don�t cross the Atlantic for fun in February. It�s a pretty light list. It�s a funny thing, too�we�ve got one man on board who�s never showed up at all. I saw him for the first time this morning�to be accurate, yesterday morning�coming from the bath, and I�ve not seen him since. He must have been hiding in his state-room all the time.�

�Ill, probably.�

�No, not ill. I asked the doctor. I suppose he don�t enjoy the society of his fellow-men for some reason or other.�

�Well, now,� I said, �let�s test your memory. What was he like?�

�You�ve given me an easy one as it happens, for he was rather a curious chap to look at, and easy to remember in consequence. A man in the fifties, I should say; medium height; wore blue pyjamas with a gold watch-chain trickling out of the pocket, and those red slippers that you buy in Cairo. But his face what what I noticed particularly. He�s got a one-inch mouth�smallest mouth I ever saw on a man. But the whole look on his face was queer, just as if it had been painted and then varnished.

�He was bald, round-faced, wrinkled, and clean-shaven. He walked very slowly, and he looked as if he were worried out of his life. There�s the portrait, and you can check it when we get off the boat�you�re bound to see him then.�

�Yes, you�ve a good memory. If I had just passed a man in a passage, I shouldn�t have remembered a thing about him ten minutes afterwards. By the way, have you spoken about the hermit passenger to anybody else?�

�No. Oh, yes, I did mention it to some of the ladies after dinner! Why?�

�I wondered if anybody besides yourself had seen him.�

�Well, they didn�t say they had. Bless you, I�ve known men like that. It�s a sort of sulkiness. They�d sooner be alone.�

A few minutes later I said good night and left him. It was between one and two in the morning. His story had made a strong impression upon me. My theory of sea-sickness had to go, and I was scared. Quite frankly, I was afraid of meeting something in blue pyjamas. But I was more afraid about Mrs.�Derrison. There were very few ladies on board, and it was almost certain she was in the group to whom Bartlett had told his story. If that were so, anything might have happened. I decided to go past her state-room, listening as I did so.

But before I reached her room the door opened, and she swung out in her nightdress. She had got her mouth open and one hand at her throat. With the other hand she clutched the handle of the door, as if she were trying to hold it shut against somebody. I hurried towards her, and she turned and saw me. In an instant she was in my arms, clinging to me in sheer mad, helpless terror.

She was hysterical, of course, but fortunately she did not make much noise. She kept saying: �I�ve got to go back to him�into the sea!�

It seemed a long time before I could get her calm enough to listen to me.

�You�ve had a bad dream, and it has frightened you, poor child.�

�No, no. Not a dream!�

�It didn�t seem like one to you, but that�s what it was. You�re all right now. I�m going to take care of you.�

�Don�t let go of me for a moment. He wants me. He�s in there.�

�Oh, no! I�ll show you that he�s not there.�

I opened the door. Within all was darkness. I still kept one arm round her, or she would have fallen.

�I left the light on,� she whispered.

�Yes,� I said, �but your sleeve caught the switch as you came out. I saw it.� It was a lie, of course, but one had to lie.

I switched the light on again. The room was empty. There were the tumbled bedclothes on the berth, and a pillow had fallen to the floor. On the table some toilet things gleamed brightly. There was a pile of feminine garments on the couch. I drew her in and closed the door.

�I�ll put you back into bed again,� I said, �if you don�t mind.�

�If you�ll promise not to go.�

�Oh, I won�t go!�

I picked her up and laid her on the berth, and drew the clothes over her. I put the pillow back under her head. With both her hands she clutched one of mine.

�Now, then,� I said, �do you happen to have any brandy here?�

�In a flask in my dressing-bag. It�s been there for years. I don�t know if it�s any good still.�

She seemed reluctant to let go my hand, and clutched it again eagerly when I brought the brandy. She was quite docile, and drank as I told her. I have not put down half of what she said. She was muttering the whole time. The phrase �into the sea� occurred frequently. All ordinary notions of the relationship of a man and a woman had vanished. I was simply a big brother who was looking after her. That was felt by both of us. We called each other �dear� that night frequently, but there was not a trace of sex-sentimentality between us.

Gradually she became more quiet, and I was no longer afraid that she would faint. Still holding my hand, she said:

�Shall I tell you what it was?�

�Yes, dear, if you like. But you needn�t. It was only a dream, you know.�

�I don�t think it was a dream. I went to sleep, which I had never expected to do after the thing that Mr.�Bartlett told us. I couldn�t have done it, only I argued that you must be right and the rest must be just a coincidence. Then I was awakened by the sound of somebody breathing close by my ear. It got farther away, and I switched on the light quickly. He was standing just there�exactly as I described him to you�and he had picked up a pair of nail-scissors. He was opening and shutting them. Then he put them down again, and shook his head. (Look, they�re open now, and I always close them.) And suddenly he lurched over, almost falling, and clutched the wooden edge of the berth. His red hands�they were terribly red, far redder than they used to be�came on to the wood with a slap. �Go into the sea. Sheila,� he whispered. �I�m waiting. I want you.� And after that I don�t know what happened, but suddenly I was hanging on to you, dear. How long was it ago? Was it an hour? It doesn�t matter. I�m safe while you�re here.�

I released her hands gently. Suddenly the paroxysm of terror returned.

�You�re not going?� she cried, aghast.

�Of course not.� I sat down on the couch opposite her. �But what makes you think you�re safe while I�m here?�

�You�re stronger than he is,� she said.

She said it as if it were a self-evident fact which did not admit of argument. Certainly, though no doubt unreasonably, it gave me confidence. I felt somehow that he and I were fighting for the woman�s life and soul, and I had got him down. I knew in some mysterious way I was the stronger.

�Well,� I said, �the dream that one is awake is a fairly common dream. But what was the thing that Bartlett told you?�

�He saw him�in blue pyjamas and red slippers. He mentioned the mouth, too.�

�I�m glad you told me that,� I said, and began a few useful inventions. �The man that Bartlett saw was Curwen. We�ve just been talking about it.�

�Who�s Curwen?�

�Not a bad chap�an electrical engineer, I believe. As soon as Bartlett mentioned the mole on the cheek and the little black moustache I spotted that it was Curwen.�

�But he said he had never seen him before.�

�Nor had he. Curwen�s a bad sailor and has kept to his state-room�in fact, that was his first public appearance. But I saw Curwen when he came on board and had a talk with him. As soon as Bartlett mentioned the mole, I knew who it was.�

�Then the colour of the slippers and�.�.�.�

�They were merely a coincidence, and a mighty unlucky one for you.�

�I see,� she said. Her muscles relaxed. She gave a little sigh of relief and sank back on the pillow. I was glad I had invented Curwen and the mole.

I changed the subject now, and began to talk about Liverpool�not so many miles away now. I asked her if she had changed her American money yet. I spoke about the customs, and confessed to some successful smuggling that I had once done. In fact, I talked about anything that might take her mind away from her panic. Then I said:

�If you will give me about ten seconds start now, so that I can get back to my own room, you might ring for your stewardess to come and take care of you. It will mean an extra tip for her, and she won�t mind.�

�Yes,� she said, �I ought not to keep you any longer. Indeed, it is very kind of you to have helped me and to have stayed so long. I�ll never forget it. But even now I daren�t be alone for a moment. Will you wait until she�s actually here?�

I was not ready for that.

�Well,� I said hesitatingly.

�Of course,� she said. �I hadn�t thought of it. I can�t keep you. You�ve had no sleep at all. And yet if you go, he�ll�.�.�. Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?�

I was afraid she would begin to cry.

�That�s all right,� I said. �I can stay for another hour or two easily enough.�

She was full of gratitude. She told me to throw the things off the end of the couch so that I could lie at full length. I dozed for a while, but I do not think she slept at all. She was wide awake when I opened my eyes. I talked to her for a little, and found her much reassured and calmed. People were beginning to move about. It was necessary for me to go immediately if I was not to be seen.

She agreed at once. When I shook hands with her, and told her to try for an hour�s sleep, she kissed my hand fervently in a childish sort of way. Frightened people behave rather like children.

I was not seen as I came from her room. The luck was with me. It is just possible that on the other side of the ship a steward saw me enter my own room in evening clothes at a little after five. If he did, it did not matter.

One afternoon I was sitting outside the Caf� de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before me, when I heard someone call my name. I turned round, and saw Lord Murchison. We had not met since we had been at college together, nearly ten years before, so I was delighted to come across him again, and we shook hands warmly. At Oxford we had been great friends. I had liked him immensely, he was so handsome, so high-spirited, and so honourable. We used to say of him that he would be the best of fellows, if he did not always speak the truth, but I think we really admired him all the more for his frankness. I found him a good deal changed. He looked anxious and puzzled, and seemed to be in doubt about something. I felt it could not be modern scepticism, for Murchison was the stoutest of Tories, and believed in the Pentateuch as firmly as he believed in the House of Peers; so I concluded that it was a woman, and asked him if he was married yet.

�I don�t understand women well enough,� he answered.

�My dear Gerald,� I said, �women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.�

�I cannot love where I cannot trust,� he replied.

�I believe you have a mystery in your life, Gerald,� I exclaimed; �tell me about it.�

�Let us go for a drive,� he answered, �it is too crowded here. No, not a yellow carriage, any other colour�there, that dark green one will do�; and in a few moments we were trotting down the boulevard in the direction of the Madeleine.

�Where shall we go to?� I said.

�Oh, anywhere you like!� he answered��to the restaurant in the Bois; we will dine there, and you shall tell me all about yourself.�

�I want to hear about you first,� I said. �Tell me your mystery.�

He took from his pocket a little silver-clasped morocco case, and handed it to me. I opened it. Inside there was the photograph of a woman. She was tall and slight, and strangely picturesque with her large vague eyes and loosened hair. She looked like a clairvoyante, and was wrapped in rich furs.

�What do you think of that face?� he said; �is it truthful?�

I examined it carefully. It seemed to me the face of someone who had a secret, but whether that secret was good or evil I could not say. Its beauty was a beauty moulded out of many mysteries�the beauty, in fact, which is psychological, not plastic�and the faint smile that just played across the lips was far too subtle to be really sweet.

�Well,� he cried impatiently, �what do you say?�

�She is the Gioconda in sables,� I answered. �Let me know all about her.�

�Not now,� he said; �after dinner,� and began to talk of other things.

When the waiter brought us our coffee and cigarettes I reminded Gerald of his promise. He rose from his seat, walked two or three times up and down the room, and, sinking into an arm-chair, told me the following story:�

�One evening,� he said, �I was walking down Bond Street about five o�clock. There was a terrific crush of carriages, and the traffic was almost stopped. Close to the pavement was standing a little yellow brougham, which, for some reason or other, attracted my attention. As I passed by there looked out from it the face I showed you this afternoon. It fascinated me immediately. All that night I kept thinking of it, and all the next day. I wandered up and down that wretched Row, peering into every carriage, and waiting for the yellow brougham; but I could not find ma belle inconnue, and at last I began to think she was merely a dream. About a week afterwards I was dining with Madame de Rastail. Dinner was for eight o�clock; but at half past eight we were still waiting in the drawing-room. Finally the servant threw open the door, and announced Lady Alroy. It was the woman I had been looking for. She came in very slowly, looking like a moonbeam in grey lace, and, to my intense delight, I was asked to take her into dinner. After we had sat down, I remarked quite innocently, �I think I caught sight of you in Bond Street some time ago, Lady Alroy.� She grew very pale, and said to me in a low voice, �Pray do not talk so loud; you may be overheard.� I felt miserable at having made such a bad beginning, and plunged recklessly into the subject of the French plays. She spoke very little, always in the same low musical voice, and seemed as if she was afraid of someone listening. I fell passionately, stupidly in love, and the indefinable atmosphere of mystery that surrounded her excited my most ardent curiosity. When she was going away, which she did very soon after dinner, I asked her if I might call and see her. She hesitated for a moment, glanced round to see if anyone was near us, and then said, �Yes; to-morrow at a quarter to five.� I begged Madame de Rastail to tell me about her; but all that I could learn was that she was a widow with a beautiful house in Park Lane, and as some scientific bore began a dissertation on widows, as exemplifying the survival of the matrimonially fittest, I left and went home.

�The next day I arrived at Park Lane punctual to the moment, but was told by the butler that Lady Alroy had just gone out. I went down to the club quite unhappy and very much puzzled, and after long consideration wrote her a letter, asking if I might be allowed to try my chance some other afternoon. I had no answer for several days, but at last I got a little note saying she would be at home on Sunday at four and with this extraordinary postscript: �Please do not write to me here again; I will explain when I see you.� On Sunday she received me, and was perfectly charming; but when I was going away she begged of me, if I ever had occasion to write to her again, to address my letter to �Mrs.�Knox, care of Whittaker�s Library, Green Street.� �There are reasons,� she said, �why I cannot receive letters in my own house.�

�All through the season I saw a great deal of her, and the atmosphere of mystery never left her. Sometimes I thought that she was in the power of some man, but she looked so unapproachable that I could not believe it. It was really very difficult for me to come to any conclusion, for she was like one of those strange crystals that one sees in museums, which are at one moment clear, and at another clouded. At last I determined to ask her to be my wife: I was sick and tired of the incessant secrecy that she imposed on all my visits, and on the few letters I sent her. I wrote to her at the library to ask her if she could see me the following Monday at six. She answered yes, and I was in the seventh heaven of delight. I was infatuated with her: in spite of the mystery, I thought then�in consequence of it, I see now. No; it was the woman herself I loved. The mystery troubled me, maddened me. Why did chance put me in its track?�

�You discovered it, then?� I cried.

�I fear so,� he answered. �You can judge for yourself.�

�When Monday came round I went to lunch with my uncle, and about four o�clock found myself in the Marylebone Road. My uncle, you know, lives in Regent�s Park. I wanted to get to Piccadilly, and took a short cut through a lot of shabby little streets. Suddenly I saw in front of me Lady Alroy, deeply veiled and walking very fast. On coming to the last house in the street, she went up the steps, took out a latch-key, and let herself in. �Here is the mystery,� I said to myself; and I hurried on and examined the house. It seemed a sort of place for letting lodgings. On the doorstep lay her handkerchief, which she had dropped. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Then I began to consider what I should do. I came to the conclusion that I had no right to spy on her, and I drove to the club. At six I called to see her. She was lying on a sofa, in a tea-gown of silver tissue looped up by some strange moonstones that she always wore. She was looking quite lovely. �I am so glad to see you,� she said; �I have not been out all day.� I stared at her in amazement, and pulling the handkerchief out of my pocket, handed it to her. �You dropped this in Cumnor Street this afternoon, Lady Alroy,� I said very calmly. She looked at me in terror, but made no attempt to take the handkerchief. �What were you doing there?� I asked. �What right have you to question me?� she answered. �The right of a man who loves you,� I replied; �I came here to ask you to be my wife.� She hid her face in her hands, and burst into floods of tears. �You must tell me,� I continued. She stood up, and, looking me straight in the face, said, �Lord Murchison, there is nothing to tell you.��.�.�. �You went to meet someone,� I cried; �this is your mystery.� She grew dreadfully white, and said, �I went to meet no one.��.�.�. �Can�t you tell the truth?� I exclaimed. �I have told it,� she replied. I was mad, frantic; I don�t know what I said, but I said terrible things to her. Finally I rushed out of the house. She wrote me a letter the next day; I sent it back unopened, and started for Norway with Alan Colville. After a month I came back, and the first thing I saw in the Morning Post was the death of Lady Alroy. She had caught a chill at the Opera, and had died in five days of congestion of the lungs. I shut myself up and saw no one. I had loved her so much, I had loved her so madly. Good God! how I had loved that woman!�

�You went to the street, to the house in it?� I said.

�Yes,� he answered.

�One day I went to Cumnor Street. I could not help it; I was tortured with doubt. I knocked at the door, and a respectable-looking woman opened it to me. I asked her if she had any rooms to let. �Well, sir,� she replied, �the drawing-rooms are supposed to be let; but I have not seen the lady for three months, and as rent is owing on them, you can have them.��.�.�. �Is this the lady?� I said, showing the photograph. �That�s her, sure enough,� she exclaimed; �and when is she coming back, sir?��.�.�. �The lady is dead,� I replied. �Oh, sir, I hope not!� said the woman; �she was my best lodger. She paid me three guineas a week merely to sit in my drawing-room now and then.��.�.�. �She met someone here?� I said; but the woman assured me that it was not so, that she always came alone, and saw no one. �What on earth did she do here?� I cried. �She simply sat in the drawing-room, sir, reading books, and sometimes had tea,� the woman answered. I did not know what to say, so I gave her a sovereign and went away. Now, what do you think it all meant? You don�t believe the woman was telling the truth?�

�I do.�

�Then why did Lady Alroy go there?�

�My dear Gerald,� I answered, �Lady Alroy was simply a woman with a mania for mystery. She took these rooms for the pleasure of going there with her veil down, and imagining she was a heroine. She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret.�

�Do you really think so?�

�I am sure of it,� I replied.

He took out the morocco case, opened it, and looked at the photograph. �I wonder?� he said at last.

That was the worst of Ravenel Hall. The passages were long and gloomy, the rooms were musty and dull, even the pictures were sombre and their subjects dire. On an autumn evening, when the wind soughed and wailed through the trees in the park, and the dead leaves whistled and chattered, while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder that folk with gentle nerves went a-straying in their wits! An acute nervous system is a grievous burthen on the deck of a yacht under sunlit skies: at Ravenel the chain of nerves was prone to clash and jangle a funeral march. Nerves must be pampered in a tea-drinking community; and the ghost that your grandfather, with a skinful of port, could face and never tremble, sets you, in your sobriety, sweating and shivering; or, becoming scared (poor ghost!) of your bulged eves and dropped jaw, he quenches expectation by not appearing at all. So I am left to conclude that it was tea which made my acquaintance afraid to stay at Ravenel. Even Wilvern gave over; and as he is in the Guards, and a polo player, his nerves ought to be strong enough. On the night before he went I was explaining to him my theory, that if you place some drops of human blood near you, and then concentrate your thoughts, you will after a while see before you a man or a woman who will stay with you during long hours of the night, and even meet you at unexpected places during the day. I was explaining this theory. I repeat, when he interrupted me with words, senseless enough, which sent me fencing and parrying strangers�on my guard.

�I say, Alistair, my dear chap!� he began, �you ought to get out of this place, and go up to town and knock about a bit�you really ought, you know.�

�Yes,� I replied, �and get poisoned at the hotels by bad food, and at the clubs by bad talk, I suppose. No, thank you: and let me say that your care for my health enervates me.

�Well, you can do as you like,� says he, rapping with his feet on the floor; �I�m hanged if I stay here after to-morrow�I�ll be staring mad if I do!�

He was my last visitor. Some weeks after his departure I was sitting in the library with my drops of blood by me. I had got my theory nearly perfect by this time; but there was one difficulty.

The figure which I had ever before me was a figure of an old woman with her hair divided in the middle; and her hair fell to her shoulders, white on one side and black on the other. She was a very complete old woman; but, alas! she was eyeless, and when I tried to construct the eyes she would shrivel and rot in my sight. But to-night I was thinking, thinking, as I had never thought before, and the eyes were just creeping into the head, when I heard a terrible crash outside as if some heavy substance had fallen. Of a sudden the door was flung open, and two maid-servants entered. They glanced at the rug under my chair, and at that they turned a sick white, cried on God, and huddled out.

�How dare you enter the library in this manner?� I demanded, sternly. No answer came back from them, so I started in pursuit. I found all the servants of the house gathered in a knot at the end of the passage.

�Mrs.�Pebble,� I said smartly, to the housekeeper, �I want those two women discharged to-morrow. It�s an outrage! You ought to be more careful.�

But she was not attending to me. Her face was distorted with terror.

�Ah dear, ah dear!� she went. �We had better all go to the library together,� says she to the others.

�Am I still master of my own house, Mrs.�Pebble?� I inquired, bringing my knuckles down with a bang on a table.

None of them seemed to see me or hear me: I might as well have been shrieking in a desert. I followed them down the passage, and forbade them with strong words to enter the library. But they trooped past me, and stood with a clutter round the hearth-rug. Then three or four of them began dragging and lifting, as if they were lifting a helpless body, and stumbled with their imaginary burthen over to a sofa. Old Soames, the butler, stood near.

�Poor young gentleman!� he said, with a sob; �I�ve knowed him since he was a baby. And to think of him being dead like this�and so young too!�

I crossed the room. �What�s all this, Soames?� I cried, shaking him roughly by the shoulders. �I�m not dead, I�m here�here!� As he did not stir, I got a little scared. �Soames, old friend,� I called, �don�t you know me? Don�t you know the little boy you used to play with? Say I�m not dead, Soames, please, Soames!�

He stooped down and kissed the sofa. �I think one of the men ought to ride over to the village for the doctor, Mr.�Soames,� says Mrs.�Pebble, and he shuffled out to give the order.

Now, this doctor was an ignorant dog, whom I had been forced to exclude from the house, because he went about proclaiming his belief in a saving God, at the same time that he proclaimed himself a man of science. He, I was resolved, should never cross my threshold, and I followed Mrs.�Pebble through the house, screaming out prohibition. But I did not catch even a groan from her, not a nod of the head nor cast of the eye, to shew that she had heard.

I met the doctor at the door of the library. �Well!� I sneered, throwing my hand in his face, �have you come to teach me some new prayers?�

He brushed by me as if he had not felt the blow, and knelt down by the sofa.

�Rupture of a vessel on the brain, I think,� he says to Soames and Mrs.�Pebble after a moment. �He has been dead some hours. Poor fellow! You had better telegraph for his sister, and I will send up the undertaker to arrange the body.�

�You liar!� I yelled. �You whining liar! How have you the insolence to tell my servants that I am dead, when you see me here face to face?�

He was far in the passage, with Soames and Mrs.�Pebble at his heels, ere I had ended, and not one of the three turned round.

All that night I sat in the library. Strangely enough, I had no wish to sleep, nor, during the time that followed, had I any craving to eat. In the morning the men came, and although I ordered them out, they proceeded to minister about something I could not see. So all day I stayed in the library or wandered about the house, and at night the men came again, bringing with them a coffin. Then, in my humour, thinking it shame that so fine a coffin should be empty, I lay the night in it, and slept a soft, dreamless sleep�the softest sleep I have ever slept. And when the men came the next day, I rested still, and the undertaker shaved me. A strange valet!

On the evening after that, I was coming down stairs, when I noted some luggage in the hall, and so learned that my sister had arrived. I had not seen this woman since her marriage, and I loathed her more than I loathed any creature in this ill-organised world. She was very beautiful I think�tall, and dark, and straight as a ramrod�and she had an unruly passion for scandal and dress. I suppose the reason I disliked her so intensely was, that she had a habit of making one aware of her presence when she was several yards off. At half past nine o�clock my sister came down to the library in a very charming wrap, and I soon found that she was as insensible to my presence as the others. I trembled with rage to see her kneel down by the coffin�my coffin; but when she bent over to kiss the pillow I threw away control.

A knife which had been used to cut string was lying on a table: I seized it and drove it into her neck. She fled from the room screaming.

�Come, come!� she cried, her voice quivering with anguish, �the corpse is bleeding from the nose.�

Then I cursed her.

On the morning of the third day there was a heavy fall of snow. About eleven o�clock I observed that the house was filled with blacks, and mutes, and folk of the county, who came for the obsequies. I went into the library and sat still, and waited. Soon came the men, and they closed the lid of the coffin and bore it out on their shoulders. And yet I sat, feeling rather sadly that something of mine had been taken away: I could not quite think what. For half an hour perhaps�dreaming�dreaming; and then I glided to the hall door. There was no trace of the funeral; but after a while I sighted a black thread winding slowly across the white plain.

�I�m not dead,� I moaned, and rubbed my face in the pure snow and tossed it on my neck and hair. �Sweet God, I am not dead.�

There was a card party at the rooms of Naroumoff of the Horse Guards. The long winter night passed away imperceptibly, and it was five o�clock in the morning before the company sat down to supper. Those who had won ate with a good appetite; the others sat staring absently at their empty plates. When the champagne appeared, however, the conversation became more animated, and all took a part in it.

�And how did you fare, Sourin?� asked the host.

�Oh, I lost as usual. I must confess that I am unlucky: I play mirandole, I always keep cool, I never allow anything to put me out, and yet I always lose!�

�And you did not once allow yourself to be tempted to back the red?�.�.�. Your firmness astonishes me.�

�But what do you think of Hermann?� said one of the guests, pointing to a young Engineer; �he has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in his life laid a wager, and yet he sits here till five o�clock in the morning watching our play.�

�Play interests me very much,� said Hermann; �but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.�

�Hermann is a German: he is economical�that is all!� observed Tomsky. �But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedorovna.�

�How so?� inquired the guests.

�I cannot understand,� continued Tomsky, �how it is that my grandmother does not punt.�

�What is there remarkable about an old lady of eighty not punting?� said Naroumoff.

�Then you do not know the reason why?�

�No, really; haven�t the faintest idea.�

�Oh! then listen. You must know that, about sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris, where she created quite a sensation. People used to run after her to catch a glimpse of the �Muscovite Venus.� Richelieu made love to her, and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew out his brains in consequence of her cruelty. At that time ladies used to play at faro. On one occasion at the Court, she lost a very considerable sum to the Duke of Orleans. On returning home, my grandmother removed the patches from her face, took off her hoops, informed my grandfather of her loss at the gaming-table and ordered him to pay the money. My deceased grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of house-steward to my grandmother. He dreaded her like fire; but on hearing of such a heavy loss, he almost went out of his mind; he calculated the various sums she had lost, and pointed out to her that in six months she had spent half a million francs, that neither their Moscow nor Saratoff estates were in Paris, and finally refused point blank to pay the debt. My grandmother gave him a box on the ear and slept by herself as a sign of her displeasure. The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that this domestic punishment had produced an effect upon him, but she found him inflexible. For the first time in her life, she entered into reasonings and explanations with him, thinking to be able to convince him by pointing out to him that there are debts and debts, and that there is a great difference between a prince and a coach-maker. But it was all in vain, my grandfather still remained obdurate. But the matter did not rest there. My grandmother did not know what to do. She had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St.�Germain, about whom so many marvellous stores are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew, as the discoverer or the elixir of life, of the philosopher�s stone, and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casanova, in his memoirs, says that he was a spy. But be that as it may, St.�Germain, in spite of the mystery surrounding him, was a very fascinating person, and was much sought after in the best circles of society. Even to this day my grandmother retains an affectionate recollection of him, and becomes quite angry if anyone speaks disrespectfully of him. My grandmother knew that St.�Germain had large sums of money at his disposal. She resolved to have recourse to him, and she wrote a letter to him asking him to come to her without delay. The queer old man immediately waited upon her and found her overwhelmed with grief. She described to him in the blackest colours the barbarity of her husband, and ended by declaring that her whole hope depended upon his friendship and amiability.

�St.�Germain reflected.

���I could advance you the sum you want,� said he; �but I know that you would not rest easy until you had paid me back, and I should not like to bring fresh troubles upon you. But there is another way of getting out of your difficulty; you can win back your money.�

���But, my dear Count,� replied my grandmother,� I tell you that I haven�t any money left.�

���Money is not necessary,� replied St.�Germain; �be pleased to listen to me.�

�Then he revealed to her a secret, for which each of us would give a good deal.�.�.�.�

The young officers listened with increased attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, puffed away for a moment, and then continued:

�That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the jeu de la reine. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-handed manner for not having yet paid her debt, by inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won sonika,[1] and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she had lost.�

�Mere chance!� said one of the guests.

�A tale!� observed Hermann.

�Perhaps they were marked cards!� said a third.

�I do not think so,� replied Tomsky gravely.

�What!� said Naroumoff, �you have a grandmother who knows how to hit upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded in getting the secret of it out of her?�

�That�s the deuce of it!� replied Tomsky; �she had four sons, one of whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have been a bad thing either for them or for me. But this is what I heard from my uncle, Count Ivan Ilitch, and he assured me, on his honour, that it was true. The late Chaplitsky�the same who died in poverty after having squandered millions�once lost, in his youth, about three hundred thousand roubles�to Zoritch, if I remember rightly. He was in despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, telling him to play them one after the other, at the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitsky then went to his victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he staked fifty thousand roubles and won sonika; he doubled the stake and won again, till at last, by pursuing the same tactics, he won back more than he had lost�.�.�.

�But it is time to go to bed: it is a quarter to six already.�

And indeed, it was already beginning to dawn: the young men emptied their glasses and then took leave of each other.

Robert Harby and Thomas Pargiton had known each other well in youth; indeed, they had once been devoted to each other; then, for more than twenty years, their friendship had lapsed. On going down from Cambridge together they had shared lodgings in London. Both had had to make their way in the world, but while Harby dreaded the prospect and would have preferred a safe civil service or academic career, Pargiton had looked forward avidly to competitive adventure. At Cambridge Harby had envied his friend his ambitious temperament, but he soon began to deplore it. The tough-mindedness he used to admire at the university showed up in London as unscrupulousness; and some of the transactions in the city in which Pargiton had become involved struck Harby as certainly mean if not positively illegal. He had not been sorry when, one morning, Pargiton abruptly informed him that he could no longer afford to live at such �a bad address,� and moved to an ostentatious flat in a fashionable part of London. After that Harby had seen less and less of Pargiton. At last he only heard of him now and then; once he saw his name in the papers in connection with a commercial case which hinted blackmail.

Meanwhile, Robert Harby had gone quickly along the path which opportunity had first opened to him. He had been employed by a firm of map-publishers which, thanks to the demand for new maps after the war, had prospered, and in course of time he had been taken into partnership. The firm had recently been putting on the market a series of guide books, and this enterprise, which had proved lucrative, was in his particular charge. It necessitated frequent journeys abroad, and it was on one of these expeditions, which combined business and pleasure in proportions agreeable to his temperament, that, after twenty years, he had met Pargiton again.

Harby had just arrived at Dieppe one wet February afternoon, when, looking out of his bedroom window, which faced the cobbled market-place, he noticed a tall man in a brown coat buying sweets at one of the stalls below. His figure struck him as familiar, but when the man moved away to distribute what he had just bought among a group of children, Harby thought he must have been mistaken. The man in the brown coat walked with a heavy limp. He appeared now to be making for Harby�s hotel. It was�no, was it?�Pargiton! The largess of sweets Harby had just witnessed was not at all like Pargiton, nor was it like him to be staying at a commercial hotel rather than at one of the glittering palaces on the sea-front, and Pargiton was not lame. Still, in spite of that, in spite, too, of that painful, hitching gait, Harby felt sure that this was none other than his old friend; but it was curiosity rather than eagerness which the next moment made him descend the corkscrew stairs to meet him. Although he could not see the face of the man who had just entered, for the hall of the hotel was a mere passage and only lit by the open door, he went straight up to him and addressed him by name. It was Pargiton; and Pargiton was glad to see him�pathetically glad, so Harby reflected late that night while he undressed.

After meeting they had repaired at once to one of the caf�s under the arches which face Dieppe harbour. There they sat and talked over ap�ritifs, dinner, and cognacs, watching, through the plate glass, craft of all sorts gently rocking on the dark water, and now and then a train draw up, jangling and panting, on the quay. Harby was starting early next morning for Caen; meanwhile, for the sake of his company, Pargiton contentedly allowed the Newhaven boat to depart without him into the night.

Reviewing their conversation in the train next day, Harby was surprised to discover how little, after all, Pargiton had told him about the last twenty years. By tacit consent they had gone back to their pre-London memories, and Pargiton had touched him a little by saying, �I have always associated you with my better self,� adding, �Now I have found you again, I don�t mean to let you go.� His career had apparently been chequered, till he inherited, about two years ago, his elder brother�s fortune and tea-broking business. Harby had also gathered that Pargiton�s brother had been engaged to a widow at the time of his death, and that the widow�s son was now being educated at Oxford at Pargiton�s expense, and that it was his intention soon to hand over the business to him.

He had not spoken of his brother directly, but Harby gathered that it was not compulsion, but loyalty, which was actuating him in these matters. This rather astonished Harby, for it came back to him that the brothers had been very indifferent in old days; �My ass of a brother,� was a phrase which he remembered had often been on Pargiton�s lips. Harby would have supposed that he was probably in love with the widow, had not a question elicited the fact that he had never seen her. As for his lameness (one leg was decidedly shorter than the other), about that, too, Pargiton had been decidedly laconic: he had had a fall on the ice and smashed his thigh near the hip joint. What was past was, thank heaven, past; he had suffered incessant and awful pain for nine months; now his leg only troubled him sometimes. He was living in a little house at Greenwich to save money, as he would soon have to give up the business to the boy. Harby must come to see him often, very often. He was lonely and hated new friends, but old friends were different. It was at this point in their talk that Pargiton had touched him by saying, with an almost frightened earnestness, �I have always associated you with my better self.� He was certainly changed, very much changed.

Harby�s tour in France lasted some months, during which he had several letters from Pargiton. Near the end of the time a telegram announced that Pargiton would join him at once, but it was followed next day by another. �All well. No need to bother you now. Look forward to your return.� Harby had no idea that Pargiton had ever had any �need� of him. Perhaps he had missed a letter while on the move? Two days later he received one which, though it mystified him still more, at least cleared up that point:

Below the signature of the letter was scrawled this P.S.: �I have not told you all.�

The second Mrs.�Ryder was a young woman not easily frightened, but now she stood in the dusk of the passage leaning back against the wall, her hand on her heart, looking at the grey-faced window beyond which the snow was steadily falling against the lamp-light.

The passage where she was, led from the study to the dining-room, and the window looked out on to the little paved path that ran at the edge of the Cathedral green. As she stared down the passage she couldn�t be sure whether the woman were there or no. How absurd of her! She knew the woman was not there. But if the woman was not, how was it that she could discern so clearly the old-fashioned grey cloak, the untidy grey hair, and the sharp outline of the pale cheek and pointed chin? Yes, and more than that, the long sweep of the grey dress, falling in folds to the ground, the flash of a gold ring on the white hand. No. No. No. This was madness. There was no one and nothing there. Hallucination�.�.�.

Very faintly a voice seemed to come to her: �I warned you. This is for the last time.�.�.�.�

The nonsense! How far now was her imagination to carry her? Tiny sounds about the house, the running of a tap somewhere, a faint voice from the kitchen, these and something more had translated themselves into an imagined voice. �The last time�.�.�.�

But her terror was real. She was not normally frightened by anything. She was young and healthy and bold, fond of sport, hunting, shooting, taking any risk. Now she was truly stiffened with terror�she could not move, could not advance down the passage as she wanted to and find light, warmth, safety in the dining-room. All the time the snow fell steadily, stealthily, with its own secret purpose, maliciously, beyond the window in the pale glow of the lamplight.

Then, unexpectedly, there was noise from the hall, opening of doors, a rush of feet, a pause, and then in clear, beautiful voices the well-known strains of �Good King Wenceslas.� It was the Cathedral choir-boys on their regular Christmas round. This, was Christmas Eve. They always came just at this hour on Christmas Eve.

With an intense, almost incredible relief she turned back into the hall.� At the same moment her husband came out of the study. They stood together, smiling at the little group of mufflered, be-coated boys who were singing, heart and soul in the job, so that the old house simply rang with their melody.

Reassured by the warmth and human company, she lost her terror. It had been her imagination. Of late she had been none too well. That was why she had been so irritable. Old Dr.�Bernard was no good: he didn�t understand her case at all. After Christmas she would go to London and have the very best advice.�.�.�.

Had she been well she could not, half an hour ago, have shown such miserable temper over nothing. She knew that it was over nothing, and yet that knowledge did not make it any easier for her to restrain herself. After every bout of temper she told herself that there should never be another�and then Herbert said something irritating, one of his silly, muddle-headed stupidities, and she was off again!

She could see now as she stood beside him at the bottom of the staircase that he was still feeling it. She had certainly half an hour ago said some abominably rude personal things�things that she had not meant at all�and he had taken them in his meek, quiet way. Were he not so meek and quiet, did he only pay her back in her own coin, she would never lose her temper. Of that she was sure.

But who wouldn�t be irritated by that meekness and by the only reproachful thing that he ever said to her: �Elinor understood me better, my dear�? To throw the first wife up against the second! Wasn�t that the most tactless thing that a man could possibly do? And Elinor, that worn, elderly woman, the very opposite of her own gay, bright, amusing self? That was why Herbert had loved her, because she was gay and bright and young. It was true that Elinor had been devoted, that she had been so utterly wrapped up in Herbert that she lived only for him. People were always recalling her devotion, which was sufficiently rude and tactless of them.

Well, she could not give anyone that kind of old-fashioned sugary devotion; it wasn�t in her, and Herbert knew it by this time.

Nevertheless, she loved Herbert in her own way, as he must know, know it so well that he ought to pay no attention to the bursts of temper. She wasn�t well. She would see a doctor in London.�.�.�.

The little boys finished their carols, were properly rewarded, and tumbled like feathery birds out into the snow again. They went into the study, the two of them, and stood beside the big open log-fire. She put her hand up and stroked his thin, beautiful cheek.

�I�m so sorry to have been cross just now, Bertie. I didn�t mean half I said, you know.�

But he didn�t, as he usually did, kiss her and tell her that it didn�t matter. Looking straight in front of him, he answered:

�Well, Alice, I do wish you wouldn�t. It hurts, horribly. It upsets me more than you think. And it�s growing on you. You make me miserable. I don�t know what to do about it. And it�s all about nothing.�

Irritated at not receiving the usual commendation for her sweetness in making it up again, she withdrew a little and answered:

�Oh, all right. I�ve said I�m sorry. I can�t do any more.�

�But tell me,� he insisted, �I want to know. What makes you so angry, so suddenly�and about nothing at all?�

She was about to let her anger rise, her anger at his obtuseness, obstinacy, when some fear checked her, a strange, unanalysed fear, as though someone had whispered to her, �Look you! This is the last time!�

�It�s not altogether my own fault,� she answered, and left the room.

She stood in the cold hall, wondering where to go. She could feel the snow falling outside the house and shivered. She hated the snow, she hated the winter, this beastly cold, dark English winter, that went on and on, only at last to change into a damp, soggy English spring.

When she urged Herbert to winter abroad�which he could quite easily do�he answered her impatiently; he had the strongest affection for this poky dead-and-alive Cathedral town. The Cathedral seemed to be precious to him; he wasn�t happy if he didn�t go and see it every day! She wouldn�t wonder if he didn�t think more of the Cathedral than he did of herself. Elinor had been the same; she had even written a little book about the Cathedral, about the Black Bishop�s Tomb and the stained glass and the rest.�.�.�.

What was the Cathedral after all? Only a building!

She was standing in the drawing-room looking out over the dusky ghostly snow to the great hulk of the Cathedral that Herbert said was like a flying ship, but to herself was more like a crouching beast licking its lips over the miserable sinners that it was for ever devouring.

As she looked and shivered, feeling that in spite of herself her temper and misery were rising so that they threatened to choke her, it seemed to her that her bright and cheerful firelit drawing-room was suddenly open to the snow. It was exactly as though cracks had appeared everywhere, in the ceiling, the walls, the windows, and that through these cracks the snow was filtering, dribbling in little tracks of wet down the walls, already perhaps making pools of water on the carpet.

This was, of course, imagination, but it was a fact that the room was most dreadfully cold, although a great fire was burning and it was the cosiest room in the house.

Then, turning, she saw the figure standing by the door. This time there could be no mistake. It was a grey shadow, and yet a shadow with form and outline�the untidy grey hair, the pale face like a moonlit leaf, the long grey clothes, and something obstinate, vindictive, terribly menacing in its pose.

She moved and the figure was gone; there was nothing there and the room was warm again, quite hot, in fact. But young Mrs.�Ryder, who had never feared anything in all her life, save the vanishing of her youth, was trembling so that she had to sit down, and even then her trembling did not cease. Her hand shook on the arm of her chair.

She had created this thing out of her imagination of Elinor�s hatred of her and her own hatred of Elinor.

It was true that they had never met, but who knew but that the spiritualists were right, and Elinor�s spirit, jealous of Herbert�s love for her, had been there driving them apart, forcing her to lose her temper and then hating her for losing it? Such things might be! But she had not much time for speculation. She was preoccupied with her fear. It was a definite, positive fear, the kind of fear that one has just before one goes under an operation. Someone or something was threatening her. She clung to her chair as though to leave it were to plunge into disaster.

She longed for Herbert to come and protect her. She felt most kindly to him. She would never lose her temper with him again�and at that same moment some cold voice seemed to whisper in her ear: �You had better not. It will be for the last time.�

At length she found courage to rise, cross the room and go up to dress for dinner. In her bedroom courage came to her once more. It was certainly cold, and the snow, as she could see when she looked between her curtains, was falling more heavily than ever, but she had a warm bath, sat in front of her fire and was sensible again.

For many months this odd sense that she was watched and accompanied by someone hostile to her had been growing. It was stronger perhaps because of the things that Herbert told her about Elinor; she was the kind of woman, he said, who, once she loved anyone, would never relinquish her grasp; she was utterly faithful. He implied that her tenacious fidelity had been at times a little difficult.

�She always said,� he added once, �that she would watch over me until I rejoined her in the next world. Poor Elinor!� he sighed. �She had a fine religious faith, stronger than mine, I fear.�

It was always after one of her tantrums that young Mrs.�Ryder had been most conscious of this hallucination, this dreadful discomfort of feeling that someone was near you who hated you�but it was only during the last week that she began to fancy that she actually saw anyone, and with every day her sense of this figure had grown stronger.

It was, of course, only nerves, but it was one of those nervous afflictions that became tiresome indeed if you did not rid yourself of it. Mrs.�Ryder, secure now in the warmth and intimacy of her bedroom, determined that henceforth everything should be sweetness and light. No more tempers! Those were the things that did her harm.

Even though Herbert were a little trying, was not that the case with every husband in the world? And was it not Christmas time? Peace and Good Will to men! Peace and Good Will to Herbert!

They sat down opposite to one another in the pretty little dining-room hung with Chinese woodcuts, the table gleaming and the amber curtains richly dark in the firelight.

But Herbert was not himself. He was still brooding, she supposed, over their quarrel of the afternoon. Weren�t men children? Incredible the children that they were!

So when the maid was out of the room she went over to him, bent down and kissed his forehead.

�Darling�.�.�. you�re still cross. I can see you are. You mustn�t be. Really, you mustn�t. It�s Christmas time, and if I forgive you, you must forgive me.�

�You forgive me?� he asked, looking at her in his most aggravating way. �What have you to forgive me for?�

Well, that was really too much. When she had taken all the steps, humbled her pride.

She went back to her seat, but for a while could not answer him because the maid was there. When they were alone again, she said, summoning all her patience:

�Bertie, dear, do you really think that there�s anything to be gained by sulking like this? It isn�t worthy of you. It isn�t, really.� He answered her quietly:

�Sulking? No, that�s not the right word. But I�ve got to keep quiet. If I don�t I shall say something I�m sorry for.� Then, after a pause, in a low voice, as though to himself: �These constant rows are awful.�

Her temper was rising again, another self that had nothing to do with her real self, a stranger to her and yet a very old familiar friend.

�Don�t be so self-righteous,� she answered, her voice trembling a little. �These quarrels are entirely my own fault, aren�t they?�

�Elinor and I never quarrelled,� he said, so softly that she scarcely heard him.

�No! Because Elinor thought you perfect. She adored you. You�ve often told me. I don�t think you perfect. I�m not perfect either. But we�ve both got faults. I�m not the only one to blame.�

�We�d better separate,� he said suddenly, looking up. �We don�t get on now. We used to. I don�t know what�s changed everything. But, as things are, we�d better separate.�

She looked at him and knew that she loved him more than ever, but because she loved him so much she wanted to hurt him, and because he had said that he thought he could get on without her she was so angry that she forgot all caution. Her love and her anger helped one another. The more angry she became the more she loved him.

�I know why you want to separate,� she said. �It�s because you�re in love with someone else. (�How funny,� something inside her said. �You don�t mean a word of this.�) You�ve treated me as you have, and then you leave me.�

�I�m not in love with anyone else,� he answered her steadily, �and you know it. But we are so unhappy together that it�s silly to go on�.�.�. silly. The whole thing has failed.�

There was so much unhappiness, so much bitterness, in his voice that she realised that at last she had truly gone too far. She had lost him. She had not meant this. She was frightened and her fear made her so angry that she went across to him.

�Very well, then�.�.�. I�ll tell everyone�.�.�. what you�ve been. How you�ve treated me.�

�Not another scene,� he answered wearily. �I can�t stand any more. Let�s wait. To-morrow is Christmas Day�.�.�.�

He was so unhappy that her anger with herself maddened her. She couldn�t bear his sad, hopeless disappointment with herself, their life together, everything.

In a fury of blind temper she struck him; it was as though she were striking herself. He got up and without a word left the room. There was a pause, and then she heard the hall door close. He had left the house.

She stood there, slowly coming to her control again. When she lost her temper it was as though she sank under water. When it was all over she came once more to the surface of life, wondering where she�d been and what she had been doing. Now she stood there, bewildered, and then at once she was aware of two things, one that the room was bitterly cold and the other that someone was in the room with her.

This time she did not need to look around her. She did not turn at all, but only stared straight at the curtained windows, seeing them very carefully, as though she were summing them up for some future analysis, with their thick amber folds, gold rod, white lines�and beyond them the snow was falling.

She did not need to turn, but, with a shiver of terror, she was aware that that grey figure who had, all these last weeks, been approaching ever more closely, was almost at her very elbow. She heard quite clearly: �I warned you. That was the last time.�

At the same moment Onslow the butler came in. Onslow was broad, fat, and rubicund�a good faithful butler with a passion for church music.

He was undisturbed, his ceremonial complacency clothed him securely.

�Mr.�Ryder has gone out,� she said firmly. Oh, surely he must see something, feel something.

�Yes, madam!� Then smiling rather grandly: �It�s snowing hard. Never seen it harder here. Shall I build up the fire in the drawing-room, madam?�

�No, thank you. But Mr.�Ryder�s study�.�.�.�

�Yes, madam. I only thought that as this room was so warm you might find it chilly in the drawing-room.�

This room warm, when she was shivering from head to foot; but holding herself lest he should see�.�.�. She longed to keep him there, to implore him to remain; but in a moment he was gone, softly closing the door behind him.

Then a mad longing for flight seized her, and she could not move. She was rooted there to the floor, and even as, wildly trying to cry, to scream, to shriek the house down, she found that only a little whisper would come, she felt the cold touch of a hand on hers.

She did not turn her head: her whole personality, all her past life, her poor little courage, her miserable fortitude were summoned to meet this sense of approaching death, which was as unmistakable as a certain smell, or the familiar ringing of a gong. She had dreamt in nightmares of approaching death, and it had always been like this, a fearful constriction of the heart, a paralysis of the limbs, a choking sense of disaster like an anaesthetic.

�You were warned,� something said to her again.

She knew that if she turned she would see Elinor�s face, set, white, remorseless. The woman had always hated her, been vilely jealous of her, protecting her wretched Herbert.

A certain vindictiveness seemed to release her. She found that she could move, her limbs were free.

She passed to the door, ran down the passage into the hall. Where would she be safe? She thought of the Cathedral, where to-night there was a carol service. She opened the hall door and, just as she was, meeting the thick, involving, muffling snow, she ran out.

She started across the green towards the Cathedral door. Her thin black slippers sank in the snow. Snow was everywhere�in her hair, her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, on her bare neck between her breasts.

�Help! Help! Help!� she wanted to cry, but the snow choked her. Lights whirled about her. The Cathedral rose like a huge black eagle and flew towards her.

She fell forward, and even as she fell, a hand, far colder than the snow, caught her neck. She lay struggling in the snow, and as she struggled there two hands of an icy fleshless chill closed about her throat.

Her last knowledge was of the hard outline of a ring pressing into her neck. Then she lay still, her face in the snow, and the flakes eagerly, savagely covered her.

My friendship with John Carlton was never bound by very strong ties. He was about twelve when we first met, and I, although two years his senior, always lagged far behind him in class.

Yet, until he came, I automatically headed the lists and I suppose really I should have been jealous of him, but he was physically weak and my feeling of superiority led me to protect him from the bullying of others whom I disliked, so that he came to be looked upon as my prot�g�. He was likeable enough, did my prep when I felt lazy�which was pretty often after I�d been made a prefect�and during those last few months, when I was beginning to realise that play days were drawing to a close, extraordinarily interesting.

He told me once, on one of those rare occasions when he unburdened his inner thoughts�the result of some particular cruelty on the part of a master�that his father was a scientist. I think it was the extraordinary way in which his face lit up as he spoke of his father which aroused my curiosity, and not so much the subject, which seemed to suggest that if his father was a genius he was also a crank. He never talked to me about him again after that.

It is no exaggeration to say that young Carlton, at the age of sixteen, possessed a knowledge of physics and chemistry far in advance of any of his teachers. If a master or demonstrator was temporarily at a loss for a word Carlton could, and did, supply it, usually to his own detriment.

He was not popular with the staff. There were occasions when he would argue with them about established beliefs and, whether he was right or wrong, his powers of argument were superior to theirs, so that they sought means of arresting those powers and, being schoolmasters, they did not have far to seek.

Personally, I liked to listen to him because he was always so convincing, however outrageous the premises of his argument might be, and always as I listened to him I thought of the father whom he worshipped as a demi-God. That was why I asked him to stay with me during my last summer holidays, expecting in return a similar invitation to his home when I should meet his father. The invitation was not forthcoming, and I felt slighted. It wasn�t that the fellow couldn�t afford to entertain�he was always amply supplied with funds�nor did he ever pretend to excuse the omission.

I remember just before the last Founder�s Day I asked him whether his father was coming. He was definitely uncomfortable then and said that his father was a busy man and could not leave his work. Then I tried a shot in the dark. �Well, why don�t the other members of your family come�your sister or your mother?�

Of course, only an important schoolboy would have asked a question like that, and I could see that he was hurt. �I haven�t a sister,� he said, but he didn�t mention his mother and and I thought it must have been as I suspected, that she was dead.

When I left school I went to London, into my father�s office. Then the war came and I was fortunate enough to come through unscathed. Afterwards I got a County Surveyor�s job and went to live at Spelford. Of course I had forgotten all about Carlton by that time�in fact when I did see his name I never connected it with the precocious schoolboy I had known.

We, that is, my department, had condemned a group of farmhouses, for structural reasons, and it appeared that the group was Carlton�s property. I had not seen the places myself, but judging from my assistant�s report, they were pretty bad.

He recognised me as soon as he came into the room, and I thought he looked mightily relieved. For my part, I resolved to give him the benefit of my experience, but to keep rigidly to my duty�I had given the fellow too much in the past without his appreciating the fact.

Our conversation was cordial enough. We chatted about old times and those whom we had seen and those whom we had not, those who had succeeded and those who had failed. He himself, he told me, had become a physicist and, although he had published little, one day he would startle the world, and that day was not far off�.�.�. and so on and so forth.

Frankly, I was disappointed when I heard him talking like that because I felt that he was a greater failure than all those others we had discussed, because his potentialities which had seemed so great were now proved to be merely the reflection of precocious eccentricity.

But at last he came to the subject of his call. He wanted me to realise that the premises were old, almost of historic interest, and even if my assistant had reported an overhang of four inches on some walls, they were in no way dangerous. Oh yes, he understood all about the �middle third� and although he had not calculated it in this case, he knew quite definitely that the structure hadn�t moved within the last twenty years. However dry the summer had been, it was absurd to suggest that there had been a settlement, because it would have shown itself on the inside; wouldn�t it?

I had always possessed a great respect for his oratorical powers and his ability to start from a fallacy and then argue logically, to prove you finally and utterly wrong. Experience had taught me that to take up the trend and answer him was fatal. Besides, tucked away in the back of my mind was the memory that years before I had wanted to see this place of his and now, strange irony, I was to be almost the sole arbiter as to whether or not its structure should be razed to the ground.

�I�ll come and lunch with you to-morrow,� I said, �and we�ll examine the parts which you say are unaffected.�

�You mean, you�ll want to see inside,� he said.

�Yes, if it�s convenient.�

He hesitated ever so slightly, �I suppose it will be necessary?�

�I don�t know about it being necessary, it may be quite useless,� I said bluntly.

He hesitated again, as though not quite sure whether to leave matters as they were or take me into his confidence. �You see, MacIre,� he said, �it�s not myself I�m worrying about�but my father is engaged on some very delicate experiments, and I don�t want him worried.�

�Your father still alive!� I said, and apologised. �You see I never imagined��and my voice trailed off in embarrassment.

�Yes, he is still alive, with my elder brother��then he bit his lip�very noticeably, because he was angry at what he imagined to be an indiscretion.

But now there was a guard upon my tongue. I did not want to offend him, and it was obvious that he was hurt. I remembered at school he had never answered my query about his mother. �To-morrow,� I said, �at lunch.�

The next day I arrived punctually at Carlton�s place. I had brought more instruments than I needed, but he had always overawed me by his use of scientific apparatus and this was where I was going to get my own back.

A glance at the building showed that I had a good case. If only the ass had made some attempt to tie in the bulges he might have had grounds on which to base his protest. But once inside the building, my sympathies veered round a little towards him. The interior certainly was worth while preserving.

There was a man to serve at table, and a girl who brought in the food. After all, I felt, if the man could afford to live in some sort of style, he could afford to rebuild a few bulging walls, even if it did cost a little more to preserve the character of the place.

Only the two of us sat down to eat. �Your father isn�t here?� I asked, and I think he must have detected the note of disappointment in my voice. At least one of the reasons for my presence there had been the hope of meeting his father.

He answered my question casually�except that he did not look at me�rather like an actor saying his lines to his dresser before a first-night��No, they don�t eat here. As a matter of fact they live in their own house�over there,� and he pointed through the open window to a large, gabled, barn-like affair.

The meal was good enough, and the wine execrable. I complimented him on both, took his proffered cigar and came straight to the point. �Let�s see that wall, Carlton.�

So two of his men held the ladder and I plumbed the wall. I made a mental note to speak pretty sharply to Barter, my assistant. One part bulged five and three-eighths inches!

I was quite blunt with Carlton�there was no hope of saving the front�he�d have to pull the whole lot down, provide new foundations if he wanted to rebuild it, and that went for part of the flank also.

He took it quite differently from what I had expected. �If it�s got to be done, MacIre, then it will be done. I�d like to leave the whole thing in your hands if it�s permissible.�

I told him it was, and gave him the name of a fairly honest builder.

�What will it cost?� he asked. It was the first time I had ever heard him mention money.

�About �350.�

�Very good,� he replied.

�But that�s not all.� He looked up at me�I had always been a good three inches taller than he��Not all?� and now his face was a pale sickly colour.

�No, there�s the other place where your father lives.�

I knew he thought that he himself had drawn my attention to the place during dinner.

He did not answer, but just stood looking at me as though trying to make out what I was thinking�what my attitude towards him was.

�I�ll have to plumb it,� I said. I was feeling uncomfortable beneath his gaze. His eyes never left me as I had the ladder adjusted and got one of the men to hold the plumb aloft I measured the overhang.

�It�s five inches,� I told him.

He said nothing.

�I can�t pass it, you know.�

He opened his mouth and seemed to have difficulty in speaking. �It�s a historic building.�

�Then you�d better protect it by rebuilding this front and the corner-returns. You can re-use the old bricks.�

There was dead silence. He looked a picture of misery.

�Is it a question of money?� I asked, knowing perfectly well that it wasn�t.

�Tell me, MacIre,� he said after a long pause, �why do you have to condemn a building?�

�Because it is a danger to those people living in it, or likely to pass by it.�

�And to which class does this belong?�

�Both.�

�The walls are bulged, they can only fall outwards.�

�That is probable.�

�I will build piers against them.�

�You couldn�t make a proper job of it�the bulge is too big and there are several nasty cracks.�

�I would build a continuous buttress.�

That knocked me off my stride for a bit. It was absurd. �There would be a weakness over the windows.�

�I would build the buttress over the windows.�

I laughed. �Don�t be an idiot, Carlton.�

�But listen, MacIre, it shows no defect inside.�

�Impossible,� I said. �With a five-inch bulge! Still I�ll have a look at it, then you won�t be able to say I wasn�t reasonable.�

He just stared at me again�that look half of misery, half of interrogation. �Look here, MacIre, that wall won�t fall. I�ll deposit any sum in the bank you like to name, to cover you. I�ll insure you against dismissal, or a claim for negligence.�

�I�m sorry, Carlton,� I said. �I would if I could�but you�re being very childish. Why save that wall (how I wanted to know!) when you can build a new home for your father and brother with the greatest of ease?�

Then his attitude changed. He blustered, he took the strong-man attitude, he tried to do to me, what I had prevented others from doing to him. It was pitiful because he over-acted.

�I shall appeal to the court,� he raved. �I shall bring the finest opinions money can buy. I will make you look a fool.�

I could have been dignified then and walked off, but I knew what I wanted. �In that case, Carlton, I shall have to examine the inside of the house,� I lied. I chuckled inwardly at my astuteness. Would to God that I had not been so clever!

�You cannot come in,� he said.

�I have a right of entry,� I reminded him, �at any reasonable time.�

I felt that it was fully on the cards for him to call the two labourers who had helped with the ladders and order them to throw me off the farm. My position would have been a particularly unpleasant one then, but one never knew just how Carlton would act.

�We�d better go in,� he said.

I followed him to the front door of the place, not without a certain trepidation. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and used two of them before the heavy oak door swung inwards on its hinges. I followed him in.

He switched on the light and shut the door behind us. We were in a completely closed lobby. On one of the side walls two wheels were fixed. He crossed and turned the nearer one, and for a moment or two, I did not realise what was happening. Then I saw that a wall was rising behind us, through the floor, to shut off the oaken door.

It seems strange to me now, that I just watched him and did nothing, but that is what did happen. Then he moved to the second wheel and turned that. Silently the wall in front of us began to drop, revealing a door. I felt as though I were leaving a submarine by means of a flooded chamber.

He unlocked the door, again using two keys, and we passed through.

I do not know which was the greatest surprise�the fact that the hall in which I found myself was brilliantly lit with electric candelabra in the middle of the day; or the fact that there was no sign of a door or window in the bare smooth walls; or the two people who were in the hall.

One of the figures rose as we entered and came towards us. That was another surprise. You see, I had understood Carlton to refer to his elder brother, but this person was a mere youth of eleven or twelve, except that the eyes possessed a shrewdness one would not ordinarily associate with a child.

The boy caught sight of me, took a step backwards, and his mouth dropped open. He turned to Carlton, and I could see that there was anger in those shrewd eyes, but he did not speak.

Carlton advanced into the centre of the room and I followed him. I could see a second figure with its back towards us, reading.

At the sound of our footsteps, the seated figure rose and turned towards us.

That was another surprise. You see I had expected to see Carlton�s father�a venerable old man with a long beard but he was a young man, tall and slim, no older than thirty.

And then I really did become afraid. It was he, Carlton, who had lied to me, and lured me into this place and not vice versa. I had been tricked. His whole attitude that afternoon had hardly been that of a normal, sane man, and I shivered as I thought what it might mean.

But however vague my fear had been, it took definite shape when Carlton addressed the young man. I was then certain beyond any doubt that I was dealing with a maniac.

�Father,� he said, �this is the surveyor who has come to see our outer structure. I had to ask him in�because the law is on his side and it was the last hope.�

The young man looked at me, and his look was not unkindly, but his words in answer to Carlton turned the fear that was upon me into something akin to terror.

�The law,� he said, �well, well, well. But to which law does he refer?�

Nobody moved. �But there isn�t anything wrong with the structure, is there, John�how can there be, eh, son?� and he laughed.

I could think of only one thing. No one knew where I was, I had not troubled to tell even Barter, and here I was with a group of people, one of whom wanted to support a brick wall with a continuous pier running over the windows, and another who believed he was the father of a man at least ten years his senior. If there hadn�t been the thought of those secret surrounding walls, I think my sense of humour might have come to the rescue.

I jumped as my sleeve was jerked. �My father is talking to you,� said Carlton. I apologised. It was essential that I should humour these people.

�The walls are perfectly sound, you can see that. They have to be, or else the insulation would be useless. You must see that�.�.�.�

Carlton interrupted him. �I have told him nothing, father.�

The �father� looked surprised. �Cannot you trust him?�

�I thought he was my friend. We were at school together�you remember E.�B.�MacIre?�

The young man smiled and looked at me. �Of course I do. There was a MacIre who was very good to you�.�.�. invited you to his home during the holidays and protected you from the bullies. You wanted to bring him home, here�.�.�. I remember, but that was impossible after we died.�

I fell on my knees. I had always imagined myself a courageous man, but now before these people I was a craven.

�Let me go,� I implored, �only let me go, I will not touch your farm.�

�Get off your knees,� said Carlton. �This isn�t the MacIre I knew, the MacIre who was slightly contemptuous of fear and physical weakness.�

But I could not rise. I just remained there, sweating, incapable of movement except for the chattering of my teeth, and the trembling in my palsied body. They helped me to rise and put me in a chair.

�Listen to me,� said Carlton. �You have promised to spare the farm, but I am sorry, I do not believe you. The first thing you would do would be to communicate with the medical officer of health and try to put us all in an asylum. Oh yes, you would, even though you may not intend to at the moment. But you would not succeed. You see this is my father and this is my brother, and they are both dead, dead, do you understand? My mother, too, is dead, but she is not here�.�.�. she�.�.�. she is dead, too�.�.�. but she is not here.�

No one spoke. We all watched Carlton�the boy with his lips tightly drawn, the �father� smiling slightly.

�You heard my father say this room is insulated. It is insulated, insulated against something that is not material, not even spiritual. It is insulated against a dimension�.�.�. against Time itself. For those who are in this room the wheel of Time does not turn, there is duration but no Time. I cannot expect you to understand that.�

Then something within me broke the spell. �You cannot insulate against Time,� I cried, �not in a stationary system. You would have to travel with the speed of light and that is impossible, because the Lorentz transformation formula shows�.�.�.� and I jabbered on to prove to him that he was raving.

Carlton waited till I was finished. �You are wrong as usual, MacIre. This room is outside the ordinary four dimensions of space and time. My father constructed this room when he was a young man. He was ready to give his secret to the world when the accident, the tragedy occurred�.�.�.� He paused for a moment.

�They were riding in a car, in the early days of motoring. I was only eleven years old, but I had spent much time in this room with my father and people called me precocious.

�They brought back my father and brother. They brought back my mother, too. I ordered the servants to take them to this place. They obeyed me because they thought I was soon to be the head of the household.

�The doctor who came said he could do nothing. I watched him, silently, noting his surprise when he saw that my brother and my father did not die. My mother, you see, was already dead.�.�.�.

�Then, I said to the doctor, �please operate.� I know he thought it was hopeless, but because the bodies grew no older, no germs multiplied, and no poison spread, he operated and they lived. For them, the time in this room has remained February 17th, 1907. If they go from here, it is death, death as you understand it, and they will be unable to return to this dimension, the fifth dimension of a space�time�universe�in the second dimension of Time. That is why you must not disturb the fabric of this barn, lest you injure the insulation within.�

�I understand,� I said.

�I thought you would,� said Carlton.

I got up from the chair. �Now that I understand, I will see that you are not molested.� Once more I saw a way of escaping from these lunatics. �I think I had better be going.�

I saw him look at the others and I did not like the look.

�I shall come and visit you, perhaps, in a few weeks� time.�

Still there was silence. �Will you please open the door?�

�You cannot go,� said Carlton.

I took up a menacing attitude. My courage seemed to have returned. �Why not?�

�Because if you go outside, you will die.�

I laughed uneasily. �I�ll take the risk.�

�But I won�t,� said Carlton. �You see they might hang me for murder. Tell me honestly, did you enjoy the wine at lunch?�

�It was horrible,� I said, smiling at his delightfully inconsequential remark.

�That was because I poisoned it. You see, whilst time does not exist in this room time rolls on outside. Actually you died about seven minutes ago, according to my calculations.�

I laughed, roared with laughter, genuine, hysterical laughter. So mad were they that I had almost become convinced by their talk.

�You will write a letter to Barter, your assistant, and tell him he is not to worry about the walls here.�

�Certainly,� I said. So I wrote: �You need not trouble about the wall here as it is only four and a half inches out of plumb.� I signed it. I knew that as soon as Barter got that note he would suspect either that I was crazy, and search for me here, or foul play.

According to Carlton that was �three weeks� ago. It is a strange thing that I do not want to escape from this place any more, but many strange things have happened. My watch ticks but does not �go.� They allowed me to shave on what seemed to be the second day, but my beard has not grown since. I have eaten nothing since I have been here. They say that it is because there is no Time, only duration here. I spend my duration either in reading or listening to Carlton�s father. They cannot have given Barter the note yet or he would have come here. They tell me I am dead, so I suppose it doesn�t matter much, what happens.

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. �At our school,� said A., �we had a ghost�s footmark on the staircase. What was it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn�t somebody invent one, I wonder?�

�You can never tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own. There�s a subject for you, by the way��The Folklore of Private Schools�.�

�Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be highly compressed versions of stories out of books.�

�Nowadays, the fiction magazines would be extensively drawn upon.�

�No doubt; they weren�t born or thought of in my time. Let�s see. I wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there was the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passing a night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, and had just time to say, �I�ve seen it,� and died.�

�Wasn�t that the house in Berkeley Square?�

�I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in the passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides, let me think�yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with marks of horseshoes also; I don�t know why. Also there was the lady who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house heard a thin voice among the bed-curtains say, �Now we�re shut in for the night.� None of those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those stories.�

�Oh, likely enough�with additions from the magazines, as I said. You never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not; nobody has that ever I came across.�

�From the way in which you said that, I gather that you have.�

�I really don�t know; but this is what was in my mind. It happened at my private school thirty odd years ago, and I haven�t any explanation of it.

�The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large and fairly old house�a great white building with very fine grounds about it; there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of the older gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four fields which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerable features.

�I came to the school in a September, soon after the year 1870; and among the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: a Highland boy, whom I will call McLeod. I needn�t spend time in describing him: the main thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not an exceptional boy in any way�not particularly good at books or games�but he suited me.

�The school was a large one: there must have been from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty boys there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required, and there were rather frequent changes among them.

�One term�perhaps it was my third or fourth�a new master made his appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish, pale, black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a good deal, and had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there was some competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remember, too�dear me, I have hardly thought of it since then!�that he had a charm on his watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he let me examine it. It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was an effigy of some absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been worn practically smooth, and he had cut on it�rather barbarously�his own initials, G.W.S., and a date, July 24, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: he told me he had picked it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of a florin, perhaps rather smaller.

�Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doing Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods�perhaps it is good one�was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads to illustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of course, that is a thing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent: there are lots of school stories in which that happens�or, anyhow, there might be. But Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of trying that on with him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to express remembering in Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentence bringing in the verb memini, �I remember.� Well, most of us made up some ordinary sentence such as, �I remember my father,� or �He remembers his book,� or something equally uninteresting: and I dare say a good many put down memino librum meum, and so forth: but the boy I mentioned�McLeod�was evidently thinking of something more elaborate than that. The rest of us wanted to have our sentences passed, and get on to something else, so some kicked him under the desk, and I, who was next to him, poked him and whispered to him to look sharp. But he didn�t seem to attend. I looked at his paper and saw he had put down nothing at all. So I jogged him again harder than before and upbraided him sharply for keeping us all waiting. That did have some effect. He started and seemed to wake up, and then very quickly scribbled about a couple of lines on his paper, and showed it up with the rest.

�As it was the last, or nearly the last, to come in, and as Sampson had a good deal to say to the boys who had written meminiscimus patri meo and the rest of it, it turned out that the clock struck twelve before he got to McLeod, and McLeod had to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected. There was nothing much going on outside when I got out, so I waited for him to come. He came very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there had been some sort of trouble. �Well,� I said, �what did you get?� �Oh, I don�t know,� said McLeod, �nothing much: but I think Sampson�s rather sick with me.� �Why, did you show him up some rot?� �No fear,� he said. �It was all right as far as I could see; it was like this: Memento�that�s right enough for remember, and it takes a genitive�memento putei inter quatuor taxos.� �What silly rot! What made you shove that down? What does it mean?� �That�s the funny part,� said McLeod. �I�m not quite sure what it does mean. All I know is it just came into my head and I corked it down. I know what I think it means, because just before I wrote it down I had a sort of picture of it in my head; I believe it means �Remember the well among the four��what are those dark sort of trees that have red berries on them?� �Mountain ashes, I s�pose you mean.� �I never heard of them,� said McLeod; �no�I�ll tell you�yews.� �Well, and what did Sampson say?� �Why, he was jolly odd about it. When he read it he got up and went to the mantelpiece and stopped quite a long time without saying anything, with his back to me. And then he said, without turning round, and rather quietly, �What do you suppose that means?� I told him what I thought; only I couldn�t remember the name of the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I had to say something or other. And after that he left off talking about it, and asked me how long I�d been here, and where my people lived, and things like that: and then I came away: but he wasn�t looking a bit well.�

�I don�t remember any more that was said by either of us about this. Next day McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind, and it was a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as a month went by without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not Mr.�Sampson was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn�t show it. I am pretty sure, of course, now that there was something very curious in his past history, but I�m not going to pretend that we boys were sharp enough to guess any such thing.

�There was one other incident of the same kind as the last which I told you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples in school to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any row, except when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were going through those dismal things which people call conditional sentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence expressing a future consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up, made some odd sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out by a door that was just by his desk. We sat there for a minute or two and then�I suppose it was incorrect�but we went up, I and one or two others, to look at the papers on his desk. Of course, I thought someone must have put down some nonsense or other, and Sampson had gone off to report him. All the same, I noticed that he hadn�t taken any of the papers with him when he ran out. Well, the top paper on the desk was written in red ink�which no one used�and it wasn�t in anyone�s hand who was in the class. They all looked at it�McLeod and all�and took their dying oaths that it wasn�t theirs. Then I thought of counting the bits of paper. And of this I made quite certain: that there were seventeen bits of paper on the desk and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I bagged the extra paper and kept it, and I believe I have it now. And now you will want to know what was written on it. It was simple enough and harmless enough, I should have said.

���Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te,� which means, I suppose, �If you don�t come to me, I�ll come to you�.�

�Could you show me the paper?� interrupted the listener.

�Yes, I could: but there�s another odd thing about it. That same afternoon I took it out of my locker�I know for certain it was the same bit, for I made a finger-mark on it�and no single trace of writing of any kind was there on it. I kept it, as I said, and since that time I have tried various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used, but absolutely without result.

�So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson looked in again: said he had felt unwell, and told us we might go. He came rather gingerly to his desk, and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and I suppose he thought he must have been dreaming; anyhow, he asked no questions.

�That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was in school again, much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my story happened.

�We�McLeod and I�slept in a dormitory at right-angles to the main building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. There was a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can�t tell exactly, but probably between one and two, I was woke up by somebody shaking me. It was McLeod, and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. �Come,� he said, �come! There�s a burglar getting in through Sampson�s window.� As soon as I could speak, I said, �Well, why not call out and wake everybody up?� �No, no,� he said. �I�m not sure who it is. Don�t make a row, come and look.� Naturally, I came and looked, and naturally there was no one there. I was cross enough, and should have called McLeod plenty of names, only�I couldn�t tell why�it seemed to me that there was something wrong, something that made me very glad I wasn�t alone to face it. We were still at the window looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked him what he had heard or seen. �I didn�t hear anything at all,� he said, �but about five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out of this window here, and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson�s window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning.� �What sort of man?� McLeod wriggled. �I don�t know,� he said, �but I can tell you one thing�he was beastly thin, and he looked as if he was wet all over, and,� he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, �I�m not at all sure that he was alive.�

�We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. I believe we did sleep a bit afterward, but we were very cheap next day.

�And next day Mr.�Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe no trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one of the oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact that neither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third person whatever. Of course, no questions were asked on the subject, and if they had been, I am inclined to believe that we could not have made any answer: we seemed unable to speak about it.

�That is my story,� said the narrator. �The only approach to a ghost story connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, an approach to such a thing.�

�Are there any old legends attached to the castle?� asked Conrad of his sister. Conrad was a prosperous Hamburg merchant, but he was the one poetically-dispositioned member of an eminently practical family.

The Baroness Gruebel shrugged her plump shoulders.

�There are always legends hanging about these old places. They are not difficult to invent and they cost nothing. In this case there is a story that when anyone dies in the castle all the dogs in the village and the wild beasts in the forest howl the night long. It would not be pleasant to listen to, would it?�

�It would be weird and romantic,� said the Hamburg merchant.

�Anyhow, it isn�t true,� said the Baroness complacently; �since we bought the place we have had proof that nothing of the sort happens. When the old mother-in-law died last spring-time we all listened, but there was no howling. It is just a story that lends dignity to the place without costing anything.�

�The story is not as you have told it,� said Amalie, the grey old governess. Everyone turned and looked at her in astonishment. She was wont to sit silent and prim and faded in her place at table, never speaking unless someone spoke to her, and there were few who troubled themselves to make conversation with her. To-day a sudden volubility had descended on her; she continued to talk, rapidly and nervously, looking straight in front of her and seeming to address no one in particular.

�It is not when anyone dies in the castle that the howling is heard. It was when one of the Cernogratz family died here that the wolves came from far and near and howled at the edge of the forest just before the death hour. There were only a few couple of wolves that had their lairs in this part of the forest, but at such a time the keepers say there would be scores of them, gliding about in the shadows and howling in chorus, and the dogs of the castle and the village and all the farms round would bay and howl in fear and anger at the wolf chorus, and as the soul of the dying one left its body a tree would crash down in the park. That is what happened when a Cernogratz died in his family castle. But for a stranger dying here, of course no wolf would howl and no tree would fall. Oh, no.�

There was a note of defiance, almost of contempt, in her voice as she said the last words. The well-fed, much-too-well-dressed Baroness stared angrily at the dowdy old woman who had come forth from her usual and seemly position of effacement to speak so disrespectfully.

�You seem to know quite a lot about the von Cernogratz legends, Fr�ulein Schmidt,� she said sharply; �I did not know that family histories were among the subjects you are supposed to be proficient in.�

The answer to her taunt was even more unexpected and astonishing than the conversational outbreak which had provoked it.

�I am a von Cernogratz myself,� said the old woman, �that is why I know the family history.�

�You a von Cernogratz? You!� came in an incredulous chorus.

�When we became very poor,� she explained, �and I had to go out and give teaching lessons, I took another name; I thought it would be more in keeping. But my grandfather spent much of his time as a boy in this castle, and my father used to tell me many stories about it, and of course, I knew all the family legends and stories. When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care. I little thought when I took service with you that I should one day come with you to the old home of my family. I could wish it had been anywhere else.�

There was silence when she finished speaking, and then the Baroness turned the conversation to a less embarrassing topic than family histories. But afterwards, when the old governess had slipped away quietly to her duties, there arose a clamour of derision and disbelief.

�It was an impertinence,� snapped out the Baron, his protruding eyes taking on a scandalised expression; �fancy the woman talking like that at our table. She almost told us we were nobodies, and I don�t believe a word of it. She is just Schmidt and nothing more. She has been talking to some of the peasants about the old Cernogratz family, and raked up their history and their stories.�

�She wants to make herself out of some consequence,� said the Baroness; �she knows she will soon be past work and she wants to appeal to our sympathies. Her grandfather, indeed!�

The Baroness had the usual number of grandfathers, but she never, never boasted about them.

�I dare say her grandfather was a pantry boy or something of the sort in the castle,� sniggered the Baron; �that part of the story may be true.�

The merchant from Hamburg said nothing; he had seen tears in the old woman�s eyes when she spoke of guarding her memories�or, being of an imaginative disposition, he thought he had.

�I shall give her notice to go as soon as the New Year festivities are over,� said the Baroness; �till then I shall be too busy to manage without her.�

But she had to manage without her all the same, for in the cold biting weather after Christmas, the old governess fell ill and kept to her room.

�It is most provoking,� said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year; �all the time that she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill, too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same.�

�Most annoying,� agreed the banker�s wife sympathetically; �it is the intense cold, I expect, it breaks the old people up. It has been unusually cold this year.�

�The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many years,� said the Baron.

�And, of course, she is quite old,� said the Baroness; �I wish I had given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this happened to her. Why, Wappi, what is the matter with you?�

The small, woolly lap-dog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and crept shivering under the sofa. At the same moment an outburst of angry barking came from the dogs in the castle-yard, and other dogs could be heard yapping and barking in the distance.

�What is disturbing the animals?� asked the Baron.

And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that had roused the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage; heard a long-drawn whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at one moment leagues away, at others sweeping across the snow until it appeared to come from the foot of the castle walls. All the starved, cold misery of a frozen world, all the relentless hunger-fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and haunting melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in that wailing cry.

�Wolves!� cried the Baron.

Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come from everywhere.

�Hundreds of wolves,� said the Hamburg merchant, who was a man of strong imagination.

Moved by some impulse which she could not have explained, the Baroness left her guests and made her way to the narrow, cheerless room where the old governess lay watching the hours of the dying year slip by. In spite of the biting cold of the winter night, the window stood open. With a scandalised exclamation on her lips, the Baroness rushed forward to close it.

�Leave it open,� said the old woman in a voice that for all its weakness carried an air of command such as the Baroness had never heard before from her lips.

�But you will die of cold!� she expostulated.

�I am dying in any case,� said the voice, �and I want to hear their music. They have come from far and wide to sing the death-music of my family. It is beautiful that they have come; I am the last von Cernogratz that will die in our old castle, and they have come to sing to me. Hark, how loud they are calling!�

The cry of the wolves rose on the still winter air and floated round the castle walls in long-drawn piercing wails; the old woman lay back on her couch with a look of long-delayed happiness on her face.

�Go away,� she said to the Baroness; �I am not lonely any more I am one of a great old family.�.�.�.�

�I think she is dying,� said the Baroness when she had rejoined her guests; �I suppose we must send for a doctor. And that terrible howling! Not for much money would I have such death-music.�

�That music is not to be bought for any amount of money,� said Conrad.

�Hark! What is that other sound?� asked the Baron, as a noise of splitting and crashing was heard.

It was a tree falling in the park.

There was a moment of constrained silence, and then the banker�s wife spoke.

�It is the intense cold that is splitting the trees. It is also the cold that has brought the wolves out in such numbers. It is many years since we have had such a cold winter.�

The Baroness eagerly agreed that the cold was responsible for these things. It was the cold of the open window, too, which caused the heart failure that made the doctor�s ministrations unnecessary for the old Fr�ulein. But the notice in the newspapers looked very well��

�On December 29th, at Schloss Cernogratz, Amalie von Cernogratz, for many years the valued friend of Baron and Baroness Gruebel.�

Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest possible time.