I wonder why we all�� and I do mean all�� are so interested in ghosts? Maybe it is a subconscious need to have some confirmation that there is an afterlife; that we continue to exist, in no matter what form, once this brief earthly journey comes to an end. Undoubtedly there would be certain advantages in being a ghost. One could�� given freedom of movement�� sit in on Cabinet meetings, take a free trip round the world and scare the living daylights out of anyone one did not like.

But of course ghosts rarely do have freedom of movement. Like Murdock Glourie in The Ghost Goes West the disembodied spirit is usually doomed to walk a predestined haunting path, over a period that can stretch into many centuries.

Such was the fate of the ghost in The Case of the Long-Dead Lord by Denis Wheatley. I, for many years, have bowed my head in respectful admiration of Mr�Wheatley�s brilliant imagination and devoutly wished I could imitate his mind-engrossing style. Those of you who have read Strange Conflict must have tried�� at least once�� to practise continuity and recapture memories of your adventures on the astral plane during sleeping hours. Once I was partially successful. Having read the book for the umpteenth time, I retired to bed, determined to find out if there was anything in the theory or not. Suddenly I found myself staring down at my own sleeping body. I was so frightened, I instantly woke up drenched in perspiration, my heart thumping like an overworked steam-engine. All right�� it may have been no more than a vivid dream, but it certainly seemed to be very real.

Having created a psychic detective of my own, I was delighted to meet Mr�Wheatley�s Neils Orsen, and a very able investigator he is too. How nice it would be if he and my fellow could work together one day.

The Lonely Apparition by Charles Thornton is short�� a mere cold breath of a story�� but I accepted it because of the visual impact, the stark reality that peeps out from behind the fabric of make-believe. Look upon it as a chilling tit-bit at a macabre feast.

The Dead Smile by F.�Marion Crawford, though, is a dreadful tale, a real piece of juicy macabre. Read this:

And very nice too.

In contrast Crimson Lake by Daphne Froome is as modern as the latest pop song, and is in fact about young musicians who inherit an old theatre and run foul of the late owner. Daphne Froome is a newcomer to this genre, but I foresee a great future for her if she continues to turn out stories like this.

New ground is also broken by Ken Alden in Old Shadows. Looking back along the avenue of time and viewing the scene of one�s childhood is usually a nostalgic experience, and we are reminded of L.�P.�Hartley�s words: �The past is a foreign country, they speak a different language there.� But were all the events that we accepted as mere manifestations of the commonplace exactly as they seemed? Was the maid who screamed just a hysterical girl with boy-friend trouble? And what about Nana, the large collie dog?

Think back�� try to remember.

Rosemary Timperley has again created that rather sad, haunting atmosphere which makes her ghost stories so readable. In The Man With the Flute the narrator is a child, who relates the eerie events in a most matter-of-fact style. I like the description of the flute player:

W.�Somerset Maugham is not usually associated with ghost stories, but The Taipan is a very good one. A taipan appears to have been �number one in not the least important branch of the most important English firm in China�. Now�� having tucked that piece of information under your belt, find out what happened to the taipan after he had seen three ghostly Chinamen digging a grave.

It gives me great pleasure to include two glorious oldies, found in some bound magazines dating back to 1886. First we have Not Yet Solved by that indefatigable writer�� so loved by Victorians�� Anonymous; then The Grey Cottage by Mrs�Claxton, I am not going to tell you anything about the story lines (that would spoil your enjoyment), but request you read them by candlelight. Better still, read them aloud to a group of friends.

Terry Tapp is another newcomer to this series and his Into the Mad, Mad World is told in a most imaginative way. I have often pondered on the possibility that some so-called mad people may have a clarity of vision not granted to the reputedly sane. Take the classic example of a man who thinks he�s Napoleon: well�� perhaps he is. In Mr�Tapp�s story Rachel Bowden knows what she has seen and why she did certain things, but the sane people decide she is mad. The reader must decide if they are right.

Guy de Maupassant has inspired many modern writers, not least of whom is W.�Somerset Maugham. The Hostelry is possibly one of his least known stories, which only goes to show that anthologists often do not do their homework. What could be more horrifying than this:

A ghost trying to get in?

Roger Malisson writes the kind of story I like, having a mind that can sense the teeming world that borders our own. In Disappearance we have a really unique plot that only allows us�� so to speak�� a glimpse through a parting in the curtain on the last page.

As regular readers of this series must be aware, Roger�F. Dunkley relates his ghost stories with tongue wedged firmly in his cheek, and The Ghost Machine has us chuckling and shivering, while marvelling at the ingenuity of the plot. When I first read this story, an idea struck me that one day�� be it in a hundred or a million years�� someone will invent a machine that might quite well transform our thought waves into visual images. In fact, if civilization continues, such an invention is a certainty. Think�� our every action may one day provide unlimited entertainment for yet to be born generations.

Have you anything to hide?

Ever since reading The Beckoning Fair One I have placed Oliver Onions among the top ten ghost story writers of all time. The Rocker is subtle, a beautiful character study of Aunt Rachel, who rocks away in her chair while the gipsy woman speaks of the small shape she is holding in her arms.

Margaret Chilvers Cooper (as I mentioned in The Twelfth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories) lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA, and again she has written a story which has its setting on the North American coastline. There is humour, a nice tight plot and some superb writing. And of course, The Cape Cod Poltergeist. What more can one ask for?

I am pleased to welcome Duncan Forbes to the ranks of the fear-mongers. 28 Tower Street is a ghost story set against a modern background, written in a crisp, engrossing style, and has a lovely twist in the tail. We are also given a glimpse of university life, which I must say, appears to be very entertaining.

Mother Love by Pamela Cleaver is a beautiful little ghost story, with an exciting twist at the end. I hope I�m not giving the game away, when I quote: �The road to hell is paved with good intentions.� Mothers have always been a nuisance to men with broad-minded ideas and Miss Cleaver�s ghostly parent is no exception.

Last of all there is my own, very humble offering. I like to think that My Dear Wife is a story with a moral: always make sure you have got rid of one love before taking on a new one. Otherwise life�� and death�� can become very complicated.

Well�� there we are. Eighteen stories. Eighteen authors�� ancient and modern�� who are prepared to guide you along the misty road that terminates in the land of what may well be. I can only wish you an exciting, if not a particularly comfortable journey.

�Thank God you�ve come,� Bruce Hemmingway cried, as he gripped the hand of the little man for whom he�d been waiting on the platform at Inverness.

�Your wire interested me,� Neils Orsen replied with a gentle smile. �What�s this about my being a naturalist?�

�I�ll tell you in a minute. Let�s go over to the hotel.�

As the two men walked across the street they made an oddly assorted couple. Neils Orsen was small and lightly built, with transparently pale skin and large, luminous blue eyes. His domed head with a high intelligent brow and mass of soft fair hair appeared too large for his diminutive body. Hatless, dressed in pale grey, carrying a basket conspicuously labelled �Live Cat�, he made a striking contrast to the tall, dark-haired American by his side.

Over coffee in the hotel Bruce explained while the Siamese cat, Pāst, sat on a chair beside them, lapping cream.

�Arkon Clyde, a friend of mine from back home, has taken Castle Stuart for the shooting. I drew up the lease and as the Clydes have never been in Scotland before they asked me to see them settled in. At the moment there�s just the old man, who is completely absorbed in books, and his glamorous daughter Fiona; their guests don�t arrive for about a week. I�ve known the girl for some time; she�s typical of her generation; sensible, a bit hard-boiled, but full of fun. Yet, when I arrived two days after them, I found her all shot to pieces.

�Well, that puzzled me quite a bit, but the only thing I could get out of her was that for the first time in her life she was suffering from the most appalling nightmares.

�The day before yesterday I took her a walk to explore the ruins of the old castle which are some two miles away. Leading to it there�s a lovely avenue of old beeches. We�d only got half-way along it when suddenly she stopped dead, and a queer look came into her eyes. �I�ve been here before,� she whispered to herself, then she began to mutter in what seemed to me like Gaelic. I took hold of her hands and shook her and she looked at me with wide, blinded eyes. As I called her name the spell seemed to snap. She just said she was tired of walking and wanted to go back.

�Maybe I�m wrong, but it didn�t seem to me a case for an ordinary doctor, so I asked Arkon if I might have a friend of mine who was a naturalist to stay for a few days, because I didn�t want them to know you are a ghost-hunter, and wired you that night.�

�Has anything happened since?� the little Swede asked in his careful English that held hardly a trace of accent.

�No, nothing; except that she never goes into her room if she can help it and spends most of her time wandering alone round the grounds.�

�Does she strike you as an imaginative young woman?�

�Far from it. She has brains as well as looks and graduated in Law at Columbus.�

Neils leaned back, placing the tips of his fingers together.

�So she doesn�t like her room? Have you been into it?�

�Yes; I even spent the night before last there, but I slept like a top and yesterday she insisted on returning to it. I can�t understand it�� I�m sure she�s terrified of it and yet she refuses to move.�

�The girl may be abnormally psychic; as neither you nor, apparently, her father are in the least disturbed.�

�Oh, one thing I forgot. She said that her door wouldn�t stay shut. Well, the night I spent there it didn�t budge an inch. I know, because I fixed a piece of cotton over the opening and it wasn�t broken in the morning.�

�At certain phases of the moon, perhaps,� Neils hazarded, �the Force�� if there is a Force�� might be stronger.�

�Maybe. But she didn�t sleep any better in my room. It�s killing her, Neils. A few days ago she was at least scared, and fighting it. Now she�s just vague and won�t talk. She looked like death at breakfast this morning, but of course her father didn�t notice anything; he was buried in some book or other. I don�t like leaving her alone. If only I could get that dog to stay with her.�

�What dog?�

�The boar-hound that belongs to the place. He liked her at first, but now he runs away as soon as she appears. Can people be possessed, Neils?�

�Certainly; but we�ve hardly enough evidence to pre-suppose such a thing in this case. Miss Clyde sounds like a girl suffering from a species of nervous collapse. Of course, a place having the history of Castle Stuart behind it would be filled with vibrations from the past, but apart from the dog�s behaviour there is nothing to suggest that her condition is the result of psychic causes.�

�I know, Neils. But I�ll swear something queer is going on. Ten days ago, in London, Fiona was a normal, healthy girl with bags of energy; now she�s a nervous wreck and so washed out that one might�� yes, one might even think that a vampire was sapping her vitality.�

Pāst closed his eyes and purred softly. �Let us go,� said Neils, �to Castle Stuart.�

There was nothing golden about the autumn dusk of Wandsworth, and the old tenement that had withstood a hundred seasons was now withstanding drizzle�� cold and incessant. A solitary tree in its forecourt that stretched naked branches to claw at the clouds went unnoticed by the orderly file of umbrella-topped shapes as they disappeared into the basement.

At a vantage point across the road where traffic tyres hissed, stood another shape�� a woman. If mortal eyes could see, the image was tall and elegant. Her hair was grey and shingled into tight small waves, clearly a style of the past. She had been ordered to wait�� to search�� but not to torment or coax.

Her endless vigil had taken her to Mayfair, to Chelsea, then Belgravia and back. Down to the river and the houses alongside. Through the portals of palaces and the thresholds of slums, ever hoping, ever yearning for a glimpse or a meeting but above all�� a call. Now it was here at Wandsworth that she watched.

The dusk had crept into the darkness and the rain, progressing from drizzle, began to hit the pavement like iced spears. The umbrellaed file was diminishing fast. It was time that she joined them.

Through a cab, then a bus, now a jaywalking boy, her shape glided and hovered at the shoulder of the last entrant. The door closed and the pungent smell of incense raked the atmosphere, then became thicker in a lounge heavily draped and almost void of light. Arrowheads of flame were poised motionless on candles as the expectant group took their places around a glass-topped table. The woman looked at them all intensely. There was not a sign of the face she sought and yet this time�� perhaps this once�� she would wait. She had witnessed immortal miracles and she felt she was due for one.

A frail crone with a face drained colourless into skull-like proportions sat in a high-backed chair. She peered at the group seated before her. Then the silence was cracked and the voice was a wheeze.

�Link your hands�� concentrate.�

That voice�� the woman had heard it before. Her memory spanned the years. It clamped tightly on the time�� the place. A room in Mayfair�� a young girl crying�� the voice of her dead husband pleading for her to join him�� the suicide and the exposure of a fraudulent medium who took without remorse a substantial donation left in the will of the young girl. It was twenty years ago, but mortal memory is short. The gathering, unsuspecting and gullible, merely sat and obeyed. Their infantile response incensed the woman. Now she must act�� but how?

She had been, unlike others, reduced to an invisible spectre: a condition of her acceptance on the other side. But here was her chance to do good. To put paid, once and for all, to the menace at the table. As the medium wheezed again the woman�s vibrations searched for help.

A thin haze of smoke began to drift across the heads of the group. It was part of the reply in response to a bogus spiritual call from the swaying figure at the head of the table. This was followed by a voice�� an echoing voice of a young man. The woman�� the invisible ghost�� knew that the controls were under the ledge of the table, at the fingertips of the medium. She saw a young woman�s tears well at the sound of the voice, and heard her high-pitched cry of recognition.

�Oh, Peter�� darling Peter.�

She was easy meat. A distorted tape-recording had seen to that, and the victim was in a believing mood. The voice from the tape grated on.

�Clare�� Clare. I am lonely. It is grey here without you. Join me. Join me�.�.�.�

The plea whined and faded and the apparition, moving with a whisper of annoyance, disturbed the flame on the candles. Their sudden dancing from the eerie wind caused shadows to fall and rise across the room. The medium stopped swaying and looked first at the group then, grimacing, towards the window. She mumbled a word of apology as she rose from her chair, and moved towards a heavy drape. The muffle of traffic nudging its way through the rain broke the silence, and the old woman annoyingly pulled the drape aside and looked at the tightly shut pane. The ghostly observer was losing patience.

All through her ageless vigil she had obeyed her calling. But now, for the good of all, and at the risk of dreaded consequences, she must act beyond instruction. She resolved to make her move: but at the last moment�� something was happening outside.

Everyone heard the skid followed by the high squeal of brakes. The darkened room buried deep in the basement was suddenly filled with the front of a bus. Its great wheels ploughed over the medium, spraying glass, window frame and bricks in all directions. The group around the table fled in horror to the safety of the far end of the room. The bonnet of the bus rose once in its momentum, then fell and rested, ejecting the driver through the windscreen. His inert body lay face down against the wall, and somewhere beneath an oily axle an old woman died.

Stunned, the huddled group gazed at the carnage. It had revealed an old tape-recorder, dragged from its hiding place by wires still attached to a splintered table. All too clearly, the invisible one knew why this had happened. She moved away smiling thanks to someone�� somewhere above her.

The rain was still pouring. She turned once and saw passengers leaving safely from the bus�s rear. A covered body was being carried on a stretcher from the basement. Something�� perhaps someone�� was behind her. She almost felt a touch.

�Hallo, Mother!�

She knew her search was over.

�Alfred�� oh, Alfred�� where�.�.�. how did�.�.�.?�

�But, Mother�� I was driving the bus.�

Sir Hugh Ockram smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in the late August afternoon, and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscured the low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had been suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. Sir Hugh�s face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawn skintight over a wooden mask, in which two eyes were sunk out of sight, and peered from far within through crevices under the slanting, wrinkled lids, alive and watchful like two toads in their holes, side by side and exactly alike. But as the light changed, then a little yellow glare flashed in each. Nurse Macdonald said once that when Sir Hugh smiled he saw the faces of two women in hell�� two dead women he had betrayed. (Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old.) And the smile widened, stretching the pale lips across the discoloured teeth in an expression of profound self-satisfaction, blended with the most unforgiving hatred and contempt for the human doll. The hideous disease of which he was dying had touched his brain. His son stood beside him, tall, white, and delicate as an angel in a primitive picture, and though there was deep distress in his violet eyes as he looked at his father�s face, he felt the shadow of that sickening smile stealing across his own lips and parting them and drawing them against his will. And it was like a bad dream, for he tried not to smile and smiled the more. Beside him, strangely like him in her wan, angelic beauty, with the same shadowy golden hair, the same sad violet eyes, the same luminously pale face, Evelyn Warburton rested one hand upon his arm. And as she looked into her uncle�s eyes, and could not turn her own away, she knew that the deathly smile was hovering on her own red lips, drawing them tightly across her little teeth, while two bright tears ran down her cheeks to her mouth, and dropped from the upper to the lower lip while she smiled�� and the smile was like the shadow of death and the seal of damnation upon her pure, young face.

�Of course,� said Sir Hugh very slowly, and still looking out at the trees, �if you have made up your mind to be married, I cannot hinder you, and I don�t suppose you attach the smallest importance to my consent���

�Father!� exclaimed Gabriel reproachfully.

�No, I do not deceive myself,� continued the old man, smiling terribly. �You will marry when I am dead, though there is a very good reason why you had better not�� why you had better not,� he repeated very emphatically, and he slowly turned his toad eyes upon the lovers.

�What reason?� asked Evelyn in a frightened voice.

�Never mind the reason, my dear. You will marry just as if it did not exist.� There was a long pause. �Two gone,� he said, his voice lowering strangely, �and two more will be four�� all together�� for ever and ever, burning, burning, burning bright.�

At the last words his head sank slowly back, and the little glare of the toad eyes disappeared under the swollen lids, and the lurid cloud passed from the westering sun, so that the earth was green again and the light pure. Sir Hugh had fallen asleep, as he often did in his last illness, even while speaking.

Gabriel Ockram drew Evelyn away, and from the study they went out into the dim hall, softly closing the door behind them, and each audibly drew breath, as though some sudden danger had been passed. They laid their hands each in the other�s, and their strangely-like eyes met in a long look, in which love and perfect understanding were darkened by the secret terror of an unknown thing. Their pale faces reflected each other�s fear.

�It is his secret,� said Evelyn at last. �He will never tell us what it is.�

�If he dies with it,� answered Gabriel, �let it be on his own head!�

�On his head!� echoed the dim hall. It was a strange echo, and some were frightened by it, for they said that if it were a real echo it should repeat everything and not give back a phrase here and there, now speaking, now silent. But Nurse Macdonald said that the great hall would never echo a prayer when an Ockram was to die, though it would give back curses ten for one.

�On his head!� it repeated quite softly, and Evelyn started and looked round.

�It is only the echo,� said Gabriel, leading her away.

They went out into the late afternoon light, and sat upon a stone seat behind the chapel, which was built across the end of the east wing. It was very still, not a breath stirred, and there was no sound near them. Only far off in the park a song-bird was whistling the high prelude to the evening chorus.

�It is very lonely here,� said Evelyn, taking Gabriel�s hand nervously, and speaking as if she dreaded to disturb the silence. �If it were dark, I should be afraid.�

�Of what? Of me?� Gabriel�s sad eyes turned to her.

�Oh no! How could I be afraid of you? But of the old Ockrams�� they say they are just under our feet here in the north vault outside the chapel, all in their shrouds, with no coffins, as they used to bury them.�

�As they always will�� as they will bury my father, and me. They say an Ockram will not lie in a coffin.�

�But it cannot be true�� these are fairy tales�� ghost stories!� Evelyn nestled nearer to her companion, grasping his hand more tightly, and the sun began to go down.

�Of course. But there is a story of old Sir Vernon, who was beheaded for treason under James�II. The family brought his body back from the scaffold in an iron coffin with heavy locks, and they put it in the north vault. But ever afterwards, whenever the vault was opened to bury another of the family, they found the coffin wide open, and the body standing upright against the wall, and the head rolled away in a corner, smiling at it.�

�As Uncle Hugh smiles?� Evelyn shivered.

�Yes, I suppose so,� answered Gabriel, thoughtfully. �Of course I never saw it, and the vault has not been opened for thirty years�� none of us have died since then.�

�And if�� if Uncle Hugh dies�� shall you��� Evelyn stopped, and her beautiful thin face was quite white.

�Yes. I shall see him laid there too�� with his secret, whatever it is.� Gabriel sighed and pressed the girl�s little hand.

�I do not like to think of it,� she said unsteadily. �Oh Gabriel, what can the secret be? He said we had better not marry�� not that he forbade it�� but he said it so strangely, and he smiled�� ugh!� Her small white teeth chattered with fear, and she looked over her shoulder while drawing still closer to Gabriel. �And, somehow, I felt it in my own face���

�So did I,� answered Gabriel in a low, nervous voice. �Nurse Macdonald��� He stopped abruptly.

�What? What did she say?�

�Oh�� nothing. She has told me things�� they would frighten you, dear. Come, it is growing chilly.� He rose, but Evelyn held his hand in both of hers, still sitting and looking up into his face.

�But we shall be married, just the same�� Gabriel! Say that we shall!�

�Of course, darling�� of course. But while my father is so very ill, it is impossible���

�Oh Gabriel, Gabriel dear! I wish we were married now!� cried Evelyn in sudden distress. �I know that something will prevent it and keep us apart.�

�Nothing shall!�

�Nothing?�

�Nothing human,� said Gabriel Ockram, as she drew him down to her.

And their faces, that were so strangely alike, met and touched�� and Gabriel knew that the kiss had a marvellous savour of evil, but on Evelyn�s lips it was like the cool breath of a sweet and mortal fear. And neither of them understood, for they were innocent and young. Yet she drew him to her by her lightest touch, as a sensitive plant shivers and waves its thin leaves, and bends and closes softly upon what it wants, and he let himself be drawn to her willingly, as he would if her touch had been deadly and poisonous; for she strangely loved that half voluptuous breath of fear, and he passionately desired the nameless evil something that lurked in her maiden lips.

�It is as if we loved in a strange dream,� she said.

�I fear the waking,� he murmured.

�We shall not wake, dear�� when the dream is over it will have already turned into death, so softly that we shall not know it. But until then���

She paused, and her eyes sought his, and their faces slowly came nearer. It was as if they had thoughts in their red lips that foresaw and foreknew the deep kiss of each other.

�Until then��� she said again, very low, and her mouth was nearer to his.

�Dream�� till then,� murmured his breath.

Rex and Owen Ainsworth sat facing Mr�T.�Payne of Dutton Pugh and Payne, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths, in a rather breathless but total silence; a silence that contrasted sadly, Mr�Payne thought, with the strident demise of Mark Banks, whose affairs the two young men had come to discuss.

It was Rex who spoke at last. �We�re sorry of course about Mr�Banks, but this really is the most marvellous piece of luck for us.�

�You�re fortunate he never bothered to update his will,� answered Mr�Payne, �so the portion of the estate which was meant for his friend, your late uncle Mr�D.�Ainsworth�� that is the Banks Playhouse plus ten thousand pounds�� now automatically passes to both of you jointly as Mr�Ainsworth�s nearest relatives.�

�It�s a pity we never met Mr�Banks�� what was he like?� asked Owen.

�I was not very well acquainted with him. I�m afraid he was a very unsociable person.�

�But surely you were the one who found him just after he died?� Rex remarked.

Mr�Payne endeavoured to reply calmly. �Yes,� he said, �but that was really by chance�� you see, he would never answer any correspondence I sent to his flat so I took to calling in at the theatre whenever any urgent legal matter needed attention. It was on one such occasion�.�.�.� Mr�Payne paused.

�Perhaps you could tell us something about the Banks Playhouse,� said Rex.

�Oh, he was much concerned with that theatre of his,� replied Mr�Payne, �though it was the electrical side that interested him most: he was quite fanatical about it. On one occasion he even beat up a stage-hand for meddling with a couple of switches. But that need not bother you; I�d advise you to sell up and forget all about it.�

�But we intend to use the theatre for our band,� said Rex.

�It�s called Crimson Lake,� put in Owen proudly.

Mr�Payne suppressed a shudder. �Good heavens! Well, I hope you realize all the difficulties involved. Have you a manager?�

�Oh, Rex is our manager,� Owen replied. �He�s always had to look after me so he�s capable of shouldering the most crippling of responsibilities. He�s an electronics engineer so he also looks after our electronics. We have mikes, lights, all the usual gear. I�m sure he�s quite up to Mr�Banks�s standard.�

�How do we get there? When can we move in?� Rex queried impatiently. He was slightly older and more businesslike than his brother.

�I have the keys here so you can go along now if you like,� Mr�Payne replied.

�Great,� said Owen. �We ought to get going because we left our van outside, parked on a yellow line.�

Mr�Payne watched with some trepidation as they hurried away. Their visit had brought back vividly to him the memory of the dead, stiff figure of Mark Banks as he lay alone in the deserted theatre. Indeed the hideous vision the man had presented, dressed in shabby jeans and plimsolls, with his long hair curling down over the collar of an old sweater dotted with solder, and the shattering sound of the taped music that had played on and on to his deaf ears were all too easily recalled to Mr�Payne. He sometimes wondered if he would ever be rid of them.

I have always known that there was something strange about my old family home, but it was only recently that I fully realized what it was. My childhood was a happy one. From the hill of middle-age I look down upon an Eden where life is one long day of games and entertainment, but alas, cursed by the relentless snake of time, which will eventually drive me out.

Memories are tinged with a rosy glow: afternoon teas with aged great-aunts in old-fashioned costumes, warm peaceful summer days when I played with my two sisters on a daisy-covered lawn that was surrounded by dahlias and lilac trees. The ghosts of my toys came gliding up the avenue of time�� the Teddy-bear with one ear, the train set, the plywood fort and the red fire engine that rang its bell when wound up. Then there is Tobias the cat that once scratched my arm, two caged birds that never sang, and of course�� Nana. She was a large collie dog with long black and white hair. We called her Nana because she bore some resemblance to the dog in Peter Pan; always looking after us, always ready to join in our rough-and-tumble games�� this is a very clear memory�� and becoming extremely agitated whenever I attempted to climb a tree.

It was not until we started visiting the homes of our friends that my sisters and I realized that there was something wrong with Grange Park. They did not have parents who were in a state of constant anxiety, servants who gave notice after a few weeks, to say nothing of a cook who steadfastly refused to come up from her basement kitchen.

I think we were perceptive enough to understand that it was not arguments or anything of that kind that disturbed our parents� peace of mind. It was something about the house itself; a �something� that was perceptible to adults only and not to us.

But there was one occasion, when we were playing with Nana in the nursery, which started a line of unrewarding conjecture in�� at least�� my mind. Suddenly the girl who was acting as our nanny came into the room, widened her eyes until they became blue lakes of abject terror, then screamed before running from the room. We never saw her again. One of my sisters was of the opinion this strange outburst was the result of a bilious attack�� an ailment that often laid Cook low�� but I decided that there must be more to it than an unwise diet, and in consequence questioned my mother.

�Mother, why was Nanny so frightened?�

For a while it seemed that she had not heard my all-important question, then she drew me to her and began to speak in that patronizing tone that adults often use when talking to children.

�Your uncle used to own this house and he had a little boy who was about your age.�

This was most interesting and I demanded more information.

�Where is this little boy?�

My mother sighed deeply and it was some time before she provided an answer.

�He would climb one of the oak trees in the garden. He fell�� and was killed.�

I thought this was meant to be a warning for me not to climb trees, lest I too came to such a calamitous end, and hastened to reassure my mother.

�I will never climb a tree. Nana won�t let me.�

My mother closed her eyes, then opened them again.

�Well, dear�� Nana was your cousin�s dog. Do you understand?�

I nodded. �Yes. That�s why Nana won�t let me climb a tree.�

Mother tightened her grip on my arm. �But�� your cousin died over twenty years ago.�

I gave this statement my full consideration and came to a not unreasonable conclusion.

�Then Nana must be very old. Very old for a dog.�

Mother released me, then stood up. �Yes, dear�� very old. Now go out and play.�

And that�s the nearest I ever came to being told the truth.

I am at school again now and everything seems ordinary. But I am not listening to this boring lesson. I am thinking about what happened during the past few weeks. As I sit at my desk, wearing my �attentive� expression, which I fix on like a mask for the benefit of the teacher, I am talking silently to you in my head�� telling you all about it, as if I were speaking aloud�� because it was exciting and wonderful, and no one can ever, ever convince me that it wasn�t.

He did exist, my Man with the Flute!

It started three weeks ago. Christmas was over but I was still on holiday. Dad and Mother had both gone back to work. They don�t get such long holidays as schoolchildren and teachers do. So I was left on my own during the daytimes. My parents didn�t really like this situation, but there was no alternative. Anyway, I�m twelve years old�� it�s not as if I were a little girl. I�m fine on my own. In fact, I liked having the flat to myself when they were out. It made me feel grown-up. As if it were my flat.

I even �made myself useful�. I�d wash the breakfast-things for a start, then make the beds: the chores Mother usually managed to do when I was at school�� but why should she when I was still on holiday? I liked helping, so she let me.

But these bits of so-called housework don�t last long. By ten or ten-thirty in the morning, I�d be finished�� washing-up done, beds made, a bit of dusting performed, just the surfaces of things�� why look for dust in corners? Leave it in peace, that�s what I say. Dust has as much right to live as anyone else.

And then I�d have the whole day before me, until five p.m. when Mother came back from the factory, where she made paper flowers. (The benefit of this was that we always had free paper flowers in the house�� all the colours of the rainbow, and all sorts of flowers�� roses, carnations, violets, snowdrops, gladioli, the lot. We were decorated all the year round.)

Well, the chores done, I�d read for a bit, then listen to the radio and dance to the dance music, and sing with the pop singers, and learn the words of the songs�.�.�. and then I�d go for a walk before lunch. Mother made me promise always to have lunch, even if I wasn�t hungry, and to take a walk to get up an appetite. She left a set lunch for me�� bread, cheese, and a glass of lemon juice�� �Protein, fat, carbohydrate and Vit.�C,� she said.

She was a very conscientious mother, although she went out to work. I know other people say otherwise, but it�s not so.

It was on my dutiful walk, to �get up an appetite�, that I first saw the Man with the Flute.

He was standing in the street, not far from the block where we live. He was old, white hair blowing in the wind, shabby clothes, himself very thin and scraggy�� and his hands looked almost like skeleton-hands as they pressed the stops on his flute. But the music he produced was not old. It was young as youth. It was full of zest and excitement. I�d go for my walk feeling quite old, but after hearing a few notes of his flute, I�d feel like a little tiny kid dancing among the daisies�.�.�.

Not that I�d ever done such a thing, but that shows how young it was. Magical-young.

That first time I saw and heard him, I just looked at him and passed by. I was too shy to speak. Same the second and third times. But on the fourth day, I didn�t pass. I plucked up my courage and stood in front of him. It was a very cold day. A fleck of snow in the air�� too cold for a real snowfall. Everyone else was hurrying and scurrying, wrapped up in scarves and hoods, and some even had umbrellas up to protect them from the bits of snow. Only the Man with the Flute and I were standing still. He was still, playing. I was still, silent.

Then he stopped playing and looked into my eyes.

No one has ever looked so deeply into my eyes before. I expect that is mostly because I never look into other people�s eyes myself. I�m afraid that they will see more of what I�m like than I shall see what they�re like. And I never want anyone to see into me. No one must look through my windows.

But he did. He looked so hard into my windows that I had to look back into his. We started staring each other out.

I don�t know which of us won for suddenly the snow broke. A real deluge of it. It broke the still coldness, and it broke our staring. He raised his flute to his lips again and went on playing, as if I wasn�t there. I ran home.

I said nothing about him to my parents. I don�t really know why�� except that he was mysteriously important to me, and�� again I don�t know why�� one never says anything important to one�s parents, does one? They must always be kept out of it, whatever it is.

On the following day, I went to look for him.

My duty-walk before lunch was a pleasure now�� a quest.

There he was, standing on the kerb, almost ankle deep in snow, playing his flute. The music soared, like bird-song. He himself looked rather like a featherless and starved bird, shoulders hunched high, spindly legs black-outlined against the snowy road behind him.

Again I stopped in front of him. At the same moment, snow began to fall again, big, sloppy white flakes of it�� rather warming in a funny way. Slippety-sloppety.

I said, �Are you hungry?�

He stopped playing and nodded his head.

�Then come home with me and share my lunch.�

I started back home and beckoned him to follow. I half-expected him not to�� but he did. There was only one weird thing about him. As we plodded along, me first, him following, I left a trail of footprints in the snow, but he did not. I thought maybe that was the effect flute-playing had on people. How was I to know that it was really weird? After all, everything is weird! Life itself for a start! You can�t keep picking on every little thing�.�.�.

I led him up the stairs and into our flat. I wiped my feet on the mat, as I�d been most severely taught to do. He didn�t bother. But nor did he leave any mess. I told him to sit down at the kitchen table, and I divided my lunch in half, half for him, half for me. Then I sat down opposite him and he was looking into my eyes again. And again I had to look back.

Then he spoke.

�You�ve forgotten me,� he said.

�Forgotten you? Oh, no! I�ve thought of you for hours, ever since yesterday.�

�I mean�� you�ve forgotten that other time.�

�What other time?�

�We were young,� he said.

�I still am.�

�Not �still�. Again.�

�Eat your lunch.� My voice, in my own ears, sounded a little like my mother�s, when she was telling me to eat. How funny�.�.�.

But he didn�t eat. �I�m not hungry for that,� he said. �It was you I wanted, you I came back to talk to, but you don�t remember. The experiment has failed. I must go back.� He got up and walked out. Soundlessly. I ran after him to the front door. I did not see it open or close, but he had gone. And then, faintly, I heard his flute playing in the street outside. I went to the window and looked out. But the snowfall was blinding. I saw nothing but fragmented whiteness.

When my mother came home at five, tired and snow-soaked, I told her nothing. I put on my act of being just as usual, an ordinary schoolgirl on holiday�� who had �been a good girl� and �eaten up her lunch, every bit��� and next day I went out to look for him, my Man with the Flute.

The snow had stopped falling but lay like a white carpet underfoot. A pale-primrose sun struggled to peer through clouds. The Man with the Flute was not in his usual place, but I could hear his music in the distance. I walked in the direction of the sound, but each time I drew closer to it, it moved farther away. I seemed to be under a kind of spell as I followed the music. I thought of Browning�s poem, �The Pied Piper�, which we�d done at school. The children who followed him had vanished for ever. Perhaps I would vanish too. Where did one go if one vanished? A reasoning part of me began to struggle against the lure of the music, but it wasn�t strong enough. I knew that I was drawing farther and farther away from home, that the streets around me had ceased to be familiar, that I had no idea where I was or how I�d get back�� but still I followed, followed. There�s a song, �Come, follow, follow�.�.�.�. I must have been following for hours, as afternoon darkness was beginning to fall. The sun had vanished behind the tall houses like a dropped light. But the music still played in the dark and still I followed. Time had collapsed for me. This, I felt, could go on for ever.

Then there was a change. Instead of continuing to retreat, the flute-sound ahead of me stayed still. I was actually overtaking it at last and when I reached the source of the sound, the Man with the Flute would be there.

I reached the source of the sound. It was loud and clear and very close. The flute seemed to be right against my ear. The Man must be there in the dark, but I couldn�t see him�� not so much as a glimmer of his white hair, a gleam of his strange, deep eyes. There was nothing but solitude and the closeness of the music.

And then the music stopped.

And the spell broke.

I was aware that it was bitterly cold, that I was exhausted, that my feet were soaked and frozen from the long snow-walk, and that I was lost. Worse than that, it was night. I should be at home. My parents would be worried sick! I must have been mad to carry on like this! I really felt quite ill. I had to find someone. So, desperation beating back natural shyness, I went up to the front door of the house opposite where the music had stopped. I rang the bell. A light was switched on in the hall. The door opened. �Who is it?� a woman�s voice asked cautiously.

�Please,� I said, trying to sound less frantic than I felt, �I�ve been so silly�� I�ve got myself lost in the dark streets�� I don�t know where I am�� and I�m freezing cold�.�.�.�

The door opened wide. �Oh, you poor child. Come right in.�

A nice woman, about my mother�s age. She called her husband. �Tom, it�s a little girl lost!� She took me into the living-room where the man rose to greet me�� and I got the shock of my life, for he was very like a younger, plumper edition of the Man with the Flute. And suddenly the mystery seemed solved to me. The Man with the Flute was perhaps this man�s father, and lived here, and that was why the music had stopped and he had vanished. He had simply come indoors. Certain that this was what had happened, I said impulsively: �I followed the Man with the Flute. He lives here with you, doesn�t he?�

There was a shocked silence, as if I�d uttered some dreadful swear-word. The couple were looking at me in wonder. Then, �You�d better sit down,� the woman said. �I� fetch you a hot drink. You�re not quite yourself. Tom, help her to take off those wet shoes and dry them before the fire.�

She bustled out of the room.

�What have I said to make you both look like that?� I asked. �Doesn�t he live here? Or is it a secret? If it is, you needn�t worry about me. I haven�t told anyone about him.�

�Why did you come here?� he asked, helping me off with my shoes, and his deep eyes seemed so familiar.

�I told you. I followed the music. Is it your father? You�re so like him.�

�My father did live here with us. He died this time last year.�

�Then my Man couldn�t be him, could he?� But I had gone very cold, and I was remembering the way my Man had made no footprints and had left our flat without opening and closing the front door and how his eyes had gazed from some other world than this.

�Did he�� play the flute�� your father?� I whispered.

�Yes. He was a professional flautist. Then he grew old and couldn�t get work, so he used to go out and play in the street. Not for money. Just to be listened to by many people. My wife and I couldn�t stop him. It was what he wanted to do, and he had a strong will. But he went out in all weathers and it was too much for him. He caught a cold which was more than a cold, died of pneumonia. And you�� you say you followed�� someone�� here?�

I nodded. �I used not to believe in ghosts,� I said, �but I think that�s what he must have been. His music had a very funny effect on me. Well, look at what�s happened�� here I am�� miles away from home�� all through following the music. Did you hear it?�

The man nodded. �Yes. Very faintly. I did hear it. But my wife did not.�

�You�re his son�� you would hear�� there�d be a connection between you and him�� but what could there be between him and me? Why me?�

�I�m going to show you a photograph of my father as a child, with his sister.� He brought an album from the bookcase and opened it at an old-fashioned picture of two children, hand in hand. One was a boy of about fourteen, the other a girl of about twelve�� and she looked so like me that I gasped with astonishment.

And then I recalled that queer conversation at the flat, when my Man had said: �You�ve forgotten me�.�.�. You�ve forgotten that other time�.�.�. We were young.� And later, �It was you I wanted, you I came back to talk to, but you don�t remember. The experiment has failed. I must go back.� And I had not seen him since, only heard his music�� the music which had led me to this house.

�She is like me, isn�t she?� I said. �I suppose she�s an old lady now.�

�No. She died of tuberculosis when she was still a child, not long after that photograph was taken. TB is curable nowadays. It wasn�t then. Many children died of it. But my father had adored his little sister and he never got over her loss. Even in the last years of his life, he composed special tunes on his flute for her. He believed that she still existed in some other sphere, as a soul, waiting for a home. He believed in reincarnation�� that is, to put it very simply, that a soul after the death of the body returns to the world in another body�.�.�.�

His wife came in with a cup of hot chocolate. �Tom, what nonsense are you telling the child?� she said. �Have you no tact?� She removed the album. �Just because this little girl looks rather like�� like someone else��� She handed me the hot drink. �Get that inside you, child, then Tom will drive you home.�

�She�s had a very strange experience,� said Tom, then changed the subject. His wife had made him feel foolish. I felt rather foolish too. Everything became ordinary again.

After I�d had my drink, Tom got his car out of the garage and drove me to the flat. He came up with me to explain what had happened, although we agreed between us that we wouldn�t mention the Man with the Flute. We would simply say that I had gone for a long walk, got lost, and called at his house for help. It was true, in its fashion.

My parents were so relieved to see me that I didn�t get too much of a scolding. I was sent straight to bed. I heard the others talking in the living-room; brooded mistily over the events of the day, then slept.

�The most extraordinary thing,� my mother said next morning. �That nice man who brought you home�� it turns out that we�re distantly related. His great-grandfather was the brother of my great-grandmother, and it seems that you have a marked physical resemblance to one of his aunts who died young. The two sides of the family lost touch with each other generations ago, but now we�ve met up again�� and all because you went for a long walk and got lost. Isn�t it an amazing coincidence?�

�Yes, isn�t it,� I agreed, knowing at the same time that it had not been a coincidence at all�� that I had been taken to that house, led there, by a magic spell cast by the music of the Man with the Flute.

On the following Sunday we went to tea with our new-found relations. My parents exclaimed at the similarity of the child in the old photograph to myself. They put it down to heredity, of course. Tom said not a word about reincarnation. Nor did I. And neither of us mentioned the Man with the Flute. Tom�s wife merely said that her father-in-law had once played in orchestras, but that was all. It�s as if grown-ups are afraid of strange things. Even Tom seemed to regret having spoken to me so freely at that curiously intimate moment when he was drying my shoes before the fire.

And now, as I said, I am back at school, thinking about it all. It is a mystery which I may never solve, but I�m glad it happened. It was so interesting, and has opened my mind to all sorts of possibilities about life: other lives, other worlds�� everything!

No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was number one in not the least important branch of the most important English firm in China. He had worked his way up through solid ability and he looked back with a faint smile at the callow clerk who had come out to China thirty years before. When he remembered the modest home he had come from, a little red house in a long row of little red houses, in Barnes, a suburb which, aiming desperately at the genteel, achieves only a sordid melancholy, and compared it with the magnificent stone mansion, with its wide verandas and spacious rooms, which was at once the office of the company and his own residence, he chuckled with satisfaction. He had come a long way since then. He thought of the high tea to which he sat down when he came home from school (he was at St�Paul�s), with his father and mother and his two sisters, a slice of cold meat, a great deal of bread and butter and plenty of milk in his tea, everybody helping himself, and then he thought of the state in which now he ate his evening meal. He always dressed and whether he was alone or not he expected the three boys to wait at table. His number one boy knew exactly what he liked and he never had to bother himself with the details of housekeeping; but he always had a set dinner with soup and fish, entr�e, roast, sweet, and savoury, so that if he wanted to ask anyone in at the last moment he could. He liked his food and he did not see why when he was alone he should have less good a dinner than when he had a guest.

He had indeed gone far. That was why he did not care to go home now, he had not been to England for ten years, and he took his leave in Japan or Vancouver, where he was sure of meeting old friends from the China coast. He knew no one at home. His sisters had married in their own station, their husbands were clerks and their sons were clerks; there was nothing between him and them; they bored him. He satisfied the claims of relationship by sending them every Christmas a piece of fine silk, some elaborate embroidery, or a case of tea. He was not a mean man and as long as his mother lived he had made her an allowance. But when the time came for him to retire he had no intention of going back to England, he had seen too many men do that and he knew how often it was a failure; he meant to take a house near the racecourse in Shanghai: what with bridge and his ponies and golf he expected to get through the rest of his life very comfortably. But he had a good many years before he need think of retiring. In another five or six Higgins would be going home and then he would take charge of the head office in Shanghai. Meanwhile he was very happy where he was, he could save money, which you couldn�t do in Shanghai, and have a good time into the bargain. This place had another advantage over Shanghai: he was the most prominent man in the community and what he said went. Even the consul took care to keep on the right side of him. Once a consul and he had been at loggerheads and it was not he who had gone to the wall. The taipan thrust out his jaw pugnaciously as he thought of the incident.

But he smiled, for he felt in an excellent humour. He was walking back to his office from a capital luncheon at the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank. They did you very well there. The food was first-rate and there was plenty of liquor. He had started with a couple of cocktails, then he had some excellent sauterne, and he had finished up with two glasses of port and some fine old brandy. He felt good. And when he left he did a thing that was rare with him; he walked. His bearers with his chair kept a few paces behind him in case he felt inclined to slip into it, but he enjoyed stretching his legs. He did not get enough exercise these days. Now that he was too heavy to ride it was difficult to get exercise. But if he was too heavy to ride he could still keep ponies, and as he strolled along in the balmy air he thought of the spring meeting. He had a couple of griffins that he had hopes of and one of the lads in his office had turned out a fine jockey (he must see they didn�t sneak him away, old Higgins in Shanghai would give a pot of money to get him over there) and he ought to pull off two or three races. He flattered himself that he had the finest stable in the city. He pouted his broad chest like a pigeon. It was a beautiful day, and it was good to be alive.

He paused as he came to the cemetery. It stood there, neat and orderly, as an evident sign of the community�s opulence. He never passed the cemetery without a little glow of pride. He was pleased to be an Englishman. For the cemetery stood in a place, valueless when it was chosen, which with the increase of the city�s affluence was now worth a great deal of money. It had been suggested that the graves should be moved to another spot and the land sold for building, but the feeling of the community was against it. It gave the taipan a sense of satisfaction to think that their dead rested on the most valuable site on the island. It showed that there were things they cared for more than money. Money be blowed! When it came to �the things that mattered� (this was a favourite phrase with the taipan), well, one remembered that money wasn�t everything.

And now he thought he would take a stroll through. He looked at the graves. They were neatly kept and the pathways were free from weeds. There was a look of prosperity. And as he sauntered along he read the names on the tombstones. Here were three side by side: the captain, the first mate, and the second mate of the barque Mary Baxter, who had all perished together in the typhoon of 1908. He remembered it well. There was a little group of two missionaries, their wives and children, who had been massacred during the Boxer troubles. Shocking thing that had been! Not that he took much stock in missionaries; but, hang it all, one couldn�t have these damned Chinese massacring them. Then he came to a cross with a name on it he knew. Good chap, Edward Mulock, but he couldn�t stand his liquor, drank himself to death, poor devil, at twenty-five; the taipan had known a lot of them do that; there were several more neat crosses with a man�s name on them and the age, twenty-five, twenty-six, or twenty-seven; it was always the same story: they had come out to China; they had never seen so much money before, they were good fellows and they wanted to drink with the rest: they couldn�t stand it, and there they were in the cemetery. You had to have a strong head and a fine constitution to drink drink for drink on the China coast. Of course it was very sad, but the taipan could hardly help a smile when he thought how many of those young fellows he had drunk underground. And there was a death that had been useful, a fellow in his own firm, senior to him and a clever chap too: if that fellow had lived he might not have been taipan now. Truly the ways of fate were inscrutable. Ah, and here was little Mrs�Turner, Violet Turner, she had been a pretty little thing, he had had quite an affair with her; he had been devilish cut up when she died. He looked at her age on the tombstone. She�d be no chicken if she were alive now. And as he thought of all those dead people a sense of satisfaction spread through him. He had beaten them all. They were dead and he was alive, and by George he�d scored them off. His eyes collected in one picture all those crowded graves and he smiled scornfully. He very nearly rubbed his hands.

�No one ever thought I was a fool,� he muttered.

He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the gibbering dead. Then, as he strolled along, he came suddenly upon two coolies digging a grave. He was astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the community was dead.

�Who the devil�s that for?� he said aloud.

The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with their work, standing in the grave, deep down, and they shovelled up heavy clods of earth. Though he had been so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his day it was not thought necessary to learn the damned language, and he asked the coolies in English whose grave they were digging. They did not understand. They answered him in Chinese and he cursed them for ignorant fools. He knew that Mrs�Broome�s child was ailing and it might have died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and besides, that wasn�t a child�s grave, it was a man�s and a big man�s too. It was uncanny. He wished he hadn�t gone into that cemetery; he hurried out and stepped into his chair. His good-humour had all gone and there was an uneasy frown on his face. The moment he got back to his office he called to his number two:

�I say, Peters, who�s dead, d�you know?�

But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. He called one of the native clerks and sent him to the cemetery to ask the coolies. He began to sign his letters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel vaguely annoyed: he did not like things to happen of which he knew nothing. His own boy would know, his boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but the boy had heard of no death in the community.

�I knew no one was dead,� said the taipan irritably. �But what�s the grave for?�

He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.

�Let me have a whisky and soda before you go,� he added, as the boy was leaving the room.

He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable. But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had drunk the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned over the pages of Punch. In a few minutes he would go to the club and play a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his mind to hear what his boy had to say and he waited for his return. In a little while the boy came back and he brought the overseer with him.

�What are you having a grave dug for?� he asked the overseer point-blank. �Nobody�s dead.�

�I no dig glave,� said the man.

�What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a grave this afternoon.�

The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.

The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.

�But damn it all, I saw it myself,� were the words on the tip of his tongue.

But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his breath failed him.

�All right. Get out,� he gasped.

But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy again, and when he came, maddeningly impassive, he told him to bring some whisky. He rubbed his sweating face with a handkerchief. His hand trembled when he lifted the glass to his lips. They could say what they liked, but he had seen the grave. Why, he could hear still the dull thud as the coolies threw the spadefuls of earth on the ground above them. What did it mean? He could feel his heart beating. He felt strangely ill at ease. But he pulled himself together. It was all nonsense. If there was no grave there it must have been a hallucination. The best thing he could do was to go to the club, and if he ran across the doctor he would ask him to give him a look over.

Everyone in the club looked just the same as ever. He did not know why he should have expected them to look different. It was a comfort. These men, living for many years with one another lives that were methodically regulated, had acquired a number of little idiosyncrasies�� one of them hummed incessantly while he played bridge, another insisted on drinking beer through a straw�� and these tricks which had so often irritated the taipan now gave him a sense of security. He needed it, for he could not get out of his head that strange sight he had seen; he played bridge very badly; his partner was censorious, and the taipan lost his temper. He thought the men were looking at him oddly. He wondered what they saw in him that was unaccustomed.

Suddenly he felt he could not bear to stay in the club any longer. As he went out he saw the doctor reading The Times in the reading-room, but he could not bring himself to speak to him. He wanted to see for himself whether that grave was really there, and stepping into his chair he told his bearers to take him to the cemetery. You couldn�t have a hallucination twice, could you? And besides, he would take the overseer in with him and if the grave was not there he wouldn�t see it, and if it was he�d give the overseer the soundest thrashing he�d ever had. But the overseer was nowhere to be found. He had gone out and taken the keys with him. When the taipan found he could not get into the cemetery he felt suddenly exhausted. He got back into his chair and told his bearers to take him home. He would lie down for half an hour before dinner. He was tired out. That was it. He had heard that people had hallucinations when they were tired. When his boy came in to put out his clothes for dinner it was only by an effort of will that he got up. He had a strong inclination not to dress that evening, but he resisted it: he made it a rule to dress, he had dressed every evening for twenty years, and it would never do to break his rule. But he ordered a bottle of champagne with his dinner and that made him feel more comfortable. Afterwards he told the boy to bring him the best brandy. When he had drunk a couple of glasses of this he felt himself again. Hallucinations be damned! He went to the billiard-room and practised a few difficult shots. There could not be much the matter with him when his eye was so sure. When he went to bed he sank immediately into a sound sleep.

But suddenly he awoke. He had dreamed of that open grave and the coolies digging leisurely. He was sure he had seen them. It was absurd to say it was a hallucination when he had seen them with his own eyes. Then he heard the rattle of the night-watchman going his rounds. It broke upon the stillness of the night so harshly that it made him jump out of his skin. And then terror seized him. He felt a horror of the winding multitudinous streets of the Chinese city, and there was something ghastly and terrible in the convoluted roofs of the temples with their devils grimacing and tortured. He loathed the smells that assaulted his nostrils. And the people. Those myriads of blue-clad coolies, and the beggars in their filthy rags, and the merchants and the magistrates, sleek, smiling, and inscrutable, in their long black gowns. They seemed to press upon him with menace. He hated the country. China. Why had he ever come? He was panic-stricken now. He must get out. He would not stay another year, another month. What did he care about Shanghai?

�Oh, my God,� he cried, �if I were only safely back in England.�

He wanted to go home. If he had to die he wanted to die in England. He could not bear to be buried among all these yellow men, with their slanting eyes and their grinning faces. He wanted to be buried at home, not in that grave he had seen that day. He could never rest there. Never. What did it matter what people thought? Let them think what they liked. The only thing that mattered was to get away while he had the chance.

He got out of bed and wrote to the head of the firm and said he had discovered he was dangerously ill. He must be replaced. He could not stay longer than was absolutely necessary. He must go home at once.

They found the letter in the morning clenched in the taipan�s hand. He had slipped down between the desk and the chair. He was stone dead.

The following is a true ghost story. It is an account of some supernatural incidents which have recently taken place in a clergyman�s house situated in a favourite London suburb. They are so strange as to be thought worthy of publication, and are here given by one of the daughters of the house.

Another year has drifted by and Rachel, once again, sits on a chair which has been thoughtfully bolted to the floor. The corridor echoes to clinical steel footsteps as stone-faced nurses march grimly about their business and Rachel waits and smiles.

She knows, deep in her heart, that she should not be in this place at all, yet she cannot convince them that she is telling the truth. Everything she tells them is true�.�.�. and they will not believe her. How simple it would be to fool them; how easy it would be to admit that it was all a figment of her imagination. Rachel smiles again with secret amusement as she imagines the satisfied look on the face of the visiting psychiatrist as he signs her file and scribbles the words on the outside, �Recommended for Release�. The walnut-grained door swishes open and an elderly man is beckoning Rachel�s nurse.

�We will see Bowden now,� he tells the nurse as if Rachel herself was not there. The words are spat out, like annoying pips. �We will see Bowden now.� Bowden�.�.�. everyone is addressed by surname�.�.�. surname�.�.�. surname�.�.�.

At the foot of the glaciers, in those naked and rock-bound couloirs which indent the snow-clad ranges of the High Alps, you will find every here and there a guest-house. These little hostelries are constructed of timber and are all built very much to the same pattern. The Schwarenbach Inn was one of them.

The Schwarenbach served as a refuge to travellers attempting the passage of the Gemmi. For the six summer months it remained open, with Jean Hauser�s family in residence; but as soon as the early snows began to accumulate, filling the valley and rendering the descent to Loeche impracticable, Jean Hauser with his three sons and his wife and daughter quitted the house, leaving it in charge of the old guide Gaspard Hari and his companion, together with Sam, the big mountain-bred dog. The two men, with the dog, lived in their prison of snow until the spring arrived. They had nothing to look at, except the vast white slopes of the Balmhorn. Pale glistening mountain peaks rose all round them. They were shut in, blockaded by the snow; it lay on them like a shroud, growing ever deeper and deeper until the little house was enveloped, closed in, obliterated. The snow piled itself upon the roof, blinded the windows and walled up the door.

On the day on which the Hauser family took their departure for Loeche, the winter was close at hand, and the descent was becoming dangerous. The three sons set off on foot leading three mules laden with household belongings. Behind them followed the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise, both riding the same mule. Next and last came the father and the two caretakers. The latter were to accompany the family as far as the beginning of the track that leads down the mountain-side to Loeche.

The party first skirted the edge of the little lake, already frozen, in its rocky hollow in front of the inn; then they proceeded along the valley, which lay before them, a white sheet of snow, with icy peaks dominating it on every side. A flood of sunshine fell across the whiteness of this frozen wilderness, lighting it up with a cold, blinding brilliance. There was no sign of life in this sea of mountains; not a movement could be seen in the limitless solitude; not a sound disturbed the profound silence.

Gradually the younger of the guides, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall long-limbed Swiss, forged ahead of the two older men and overtook the mule on which the two women were riding. The daughter saw him as he approached and there was sadness in the glance with which she summoned him to her side.

She was a little peasant girl with a complexion like milk. Her flaxen hair was so pale that one would fancy it had been bleached by prolonged residence amongst the snows and glaciers.

On overtaking the mule on which Louise and her mother were riding, Ulrich Kunsi placed his hand on the crupper and slackened his pace. The mother began talking; she expounded in infinite detail her instructions for wintering. It was the first time that Ulrich had stayed behind. Old Hari, on the other hand, had already accomplished his fourteenth hibernation, under the snow that covered the Schwarenbach Inn.

Ulrich listened, but without any appearance of grasping what was said. He never took his eyes off the daughter. Every now and then he would reply: �Yes, Madame Hauser.� But his thoughts seemed far away, and his face remained calm and impassive.

They reached the Daubensee, which lies at the foot of the valley. Its surface was now a vast level sheet of ice. On the right, the rocks of the Daubenhorn, dark and precipitous, rose above the vast moraines of the Lemmern Glacier, and the Wildstrubel towered over all.

As they approached the Gemmi saddle, from which begins the descent to Loeche, they suddenly beheld, across the deep wide valley of the Rhone, the prodigious sky-line of the Valais Alps, a distant multitude of white peaks of unequal size, some pointed, some flattened, but all glistening in the rays of the sun.

There was the two-horned Mischabel, the majestic mass of the Weisshorn, the lumbering Brunegghorn, the lofty and fear-inspiring Cervin, which has killed so many men, and the Dent-Blanche, monstrous yet alluring. Below them, in an enormous hollow at the foot of terrifying precipices, they caught sight of Loeche, so far away from them that the houses seemed like a handful of sand, thrown down into the vast crevasse which has at one end the barrier of the Gemmi, and at the other a wide exit to the Rhone valley.

They had reached the head of a path, which winds downwards in serpentine coils, fantastic and extraordinary, along the mountain-side, until it reaches the almost invisible village at the foot. The mule stopped and the two women jumped down into the snow. By this time the two older men had overtaken the rest of the party.

�Now, friends,� said old Hauser, �we must say goodbye till next year. And keep your hearts up.�

�Till next year,� replied Hari.

The men embraced. Madame Hauser gave her cheek to be kissed and her daughter followed her example. When it was Ulrich Kunsi�s turn to kiss Louise, he whispered in her ear:

�Don�t forget us up on our heights.�

�No,� she replied in tones so low that he guessed, rather than heard, the word.

�Well, well, goodbye,� said old Hauser again. �Take care of yourselves.�

He strode on past the women and led the way downwards. All three were lost to view at the first bend in the track. Gaspard and Ulrich turned back towards the Schwarenbach Inn. They walked slowly and in silence, side by side. They had seen the last of their friends. They were to be alone, with no other companionship, for four or five months.

Gaspard Hari began to tell Ulrich about the previous winter. His companion then had been Michael Carol; but accidents were likely to happen during the long solitude, and Michael had grown too old for the job. Still, they had had a pretty good time together. The secret of the whole thing was to make up your mind to it from the beginning. Sooner or later one invented distractions and games and things to while away the time.

With downcast eyes Ulrich Kunsi listened to his companion, but his thoughts were following the women, who were making their way to the village, down the zigzag path on the Gemmi mountain-side.

They soon caught sight of the distant inn. It looked very tiny, like a black dot at the base of the stupendous mountain of snow. When they opened the door of the house, Sam, the great curly-haired dog, gambolled round them joyfully.

�Well, Ulrich, my boy,� said old Gaspard, �we have no women here now. We must get dinner ready ourselves. You can set to and peel the potatoes.�

They sat down on wooden stools and began to prepare the soup. The forenoon of the following day seemed long to Ulrich Kunsi. Old Hari smoked his pipe and spat into the fireplace. The younger man looked through the window at the superb mountain, which rose in front of the house. In the afternoon he went out, and pursuing the road he had taken the previous day, he followed the tracks of the mule on which the two women had ridden. He arrived at last at the saddle of the Gemmi, and lying prone on the edge of the precipice, gazed down on Loeche. The village, nestling in its rocky hollow, had not yet been obliterated by the snow. But there was snow very near it. Its advance had been arrested by the pine forests which guarded the environs of the hamlet. Seen from a height, the low houses of the village looked like paving-stones set in a field.

Ulrich reflected that Louise Hauser was now in one of those grey cottages. Which one was it, he wondered. They were too remote to be separately distinguished. He had a yearning to go down there while it was still possible. But the sun had disappeared behind the great peak of Wildstrubel, and Ulrich turned homewards. He found Hari smoking. On Ulrich�s return Hari proposed a game of cards and the two men sat down on opposite sides of the table. They played for a long time at a simple game called brisque. Then they had supper and went to bed.

Subsequent days were like the first, clear and cold, without any fresh fall of snow. Gaspard passed his days watching the eagles and other rare birds, which adventure themselves in these frozen altitudes. For his part, Ulrich went regularly to the col to look down at the distant village. In the evening they played cards, dice and dominoes, staking small objects to lend an interest to the game.

One morning, Hari, who had been the first to rise, called out to Ulrich. A drifting cloud of white foam, deep yet ethereal, was sinking down on them and on all around them, spreading over them slowly, silently, a cover which, grew ever thicker and heavier. The snowfall lasted four days and four nights. The door and windows had to be cleared, a passage dug, and steps cut, to enable them to climb out on to the surface of powdery snow, which twelve hours of frost had made harder than the granite of the moraines.

After that, they lived as in a prison, hardly ever venturing outside their dwelling. The household tasks were divided between them and were punctually performed. Ulrich Kunsi undertook the cleaning and washing up and keeping the house neat. He also split the firewood. Hari kept the fire going and did the cooking. These necessary and monotonous tasks were relieved by long contests at dice or cards. Being both of them of calm and placid temperament, they never quarrelled. They never went even as far as to display impatience or peevishness, or to speak sharply to each other, both having determined beforehand to make the best of their wintry sojourn on the heights. Occasionally Gaspard took his gun and went out hunting chamois, and when he had the good luck to kill one, it was high day and holiday in the Schwarenbach Inn and there was great feasting on fresh meat.

One morning Hari set forth on one of these expeditions. The thermometer outside the inn showed thirty degrees of frost. Hari started before sunrise, hoping to take the chamois by surprise on the lower slopes of the Wildstrubel.

Left to himself, Ulrich remained in bed until ten o�clock. He was by nature a good sleeper, but he would not have dared to give way to this proclivity in the presence of the old guide, who was an early riser and always full of energy. He lingered over his breakfast, which he shared with Sam, who passed his days and nights sleeping in front of the fire. After breakfast he felt his spirits oppressed, and almost daunted, by the solitude, and he longed for his daily game of cards with the unconquerable craving that comes of ingrained habit. Later, he went out to meet his comrade, who was due to return at four o�clock.

The whole valley was now of a uniform level under its thick covering of snow. The crevasses were full to the top; the two lakes could no longer be distinguished; the rocks lay hid under a snowy quilt. Lying at the foot of the immense peaks, the valley was now one immense basin, symmetrical, frozen, and of a blinding whiteness.

It was three weeks since Ulrich had been to the edge of the precipice from which he looked down at the village. He thought he would go there again, before climbing the slopes that led to the Wildstrubel. The snow had now reached Loeche, and the houses were lost under their white mantle.

Turning to the right, he reached the Lemmern glacier. He walked with the mountaineer�s long stride, driving his iron-pointed stick down on to the snow, which was as hard as stone. With his far-sighted eyes he sought the small black dot which he expected to see moving, in the far distance, over this vast sheet of snow. On reaching the edge of the glacier he stopped, wondering whether old Hari had really come that way. Then, with increasing anxiety and quicker steps, he began to skirt the moraines.

The sun was sinking. The snow was suffused with a tinge of pink, and over its crystalline surface swept sharp gusts of a dry and icy breeze. Ulrich tried to reach his friend with a call, shrill, vibrant, prolonged. His voice took its flight into the deathless silence, in which the mountains slept. It rang far out over the deep motionless undulations of frozen foam, like the cry of a bird over the waves of the sea. Then it died away. And there was no reply.

He walked on and on. The sun had sunk behind the peaks, and the purple glow of sunset still lingered about them, but the depths of the valley were grey and shadowy, and Ulrich was suddenly afraid. He had an idea that the silence, the cold, the solitude were taking possession of him, were about to arrest his circulation and freeze his blood, stiffen his limbs and convert him into a motionless, frozen image. With all speed he could, he ran back towards the Inn. Hari, he thought, must have taken another way and reached home already. He would find him seated by the fire, with a dead chamois at his feet. He soon came in sight of the hostelry. There was no smoke issuing from the chimney. Ulrich ran yet faster, and when he opened the door of the house, Sam leaped up to greet him. But there was no Gaspard Hari.

In consternation Kunsi turned hither and thither, as though expecting to find his comrade hiding in a corner. Then he relighted the fire and made the soup, still hoping that he would look up and see the old man coming in. From time to time he went outside, in case there should be some sign of him. Night had fallen, that wan, livid night of the mountains, illumined only by the slender, yellow crescent of a new moon, which was sinking towards the skyline and would soon disappear behind the ridge.

Returning to the house, Ulrich sat down by the fire and while he was warming his hands and feet, his thoughts ran on possible accidents. Gaspard might have broken a leg, or fallen into a hollow, or made a false step, which had cost him a sprained ankle. He would be lying in the snow, helpless against the benumbing cold, in agony of mind, far from any other human soul, calling out for help, shouting with all the strength of his voice in the silence of the night.

How to discover where he was? So vast and craggy was the mountain, so dangerous the approaches to it, especially in the winter, that it would take ten or twenty guides searching for a week in all directions to find a man in that immensity. None the less Ulrich made up his mind to take Sam and set forth to look for Gaspard, if he had not come back by one in the morning.

He made his preparations. He put two days� provisions into a bag, took his cramp-irons, wound round his waist a long, strong, slender rope, and inspected thoroughly his spiked stick and his ice-axes. Then he waited. The fire was burning with a clear flame; the great dog lay snoring in its warmth; the steady ticking of the clock, in its resonant wooden case, sounded like the beating of a heart. Still he waited, his ears straining to catch any distant noise. When the light breeze whispered round roof and walls, he shivered.

The clock struck the hour of midnight. Feeling chilled and nervous, he put some water on the fire to boil, so that he might have some steaming coffee before setting out. When the clock struck one, he rose, called Sam, opened the door and struck out in the direction of the Wildstrubel. He climbed for five hours continuously. He scaled the rocks with the help of his irons, and cut steps in the ice with his axe, always advancing steadily and sometimes hauling the dog after him up some steep escarpment. It was about six o�clock when he reached one of the peaks to which Gaspard often came in search of chamois. There he waited for the day to break.

The sky above became gradually paler. Then suddenly that strange radiance, which springs no one knows whence, gleamed over the great ocean of snow-clad peaks, stretching for a hundred leagues around him. The vague light seemed to arise out of the snow itself and to diffuse itself in space. One by one, the highest and farthest pinnacles were suffused by a tender rosy hue and the red sun rose from behind the great masses of the Bernese Alps. Ulrich Kunsi set forth again. Like a hunter, he went down, searching for tracks and saying to his dog:

�Seek, old man, seek.�

He was now on his way down the mountain, investigating every chasm, and sometimes sending forth a prolonged call, which quickly died away in the dumb immensity. At times he put his ear close to the ground to listen. Once he thought he heard a voice and he ran in the direction of it, shouting as he ran, but he heard nothing more, and sat down, exhausted and despairing. About mid-day he shared some food with Sam, who was as weary as himself. And again he set out on his search. When evening came, he was still walking, having accomplished fifty kilometres among the mountains. He was too far from his house to think of returning there, and too tired to drag himself along any farther. Digging a hole in the snow, he curled up in it with his dog, under cover of a blanket which he had brought with him. Man and beast lay together, each body sharing the warmth of the other, but frozen to the marrow none the less. Ulrich�s mind was haunted by visions, and his limbs were shaking with cold. He could not sleep at all. When he rose, day was on the point of breaking. His legs felt as rigid as bars of iron; his resolution was so enfeebled that he almost sobbed aloud in his distress, and his heart beat so violently that he nearly collapsed with emotion whenever he fancied that he heard a sound.

The thought suddenly came to him that he too might perish of cold amidst these solitudes, and the fear of such a death whipped up his energy and roused him to fresh vigour. He was now making the descent towards the Inn, and kept falling down from weariness and picking himself up again. His dog Sam, with one paw disabled, followed far behind, limping. It was four o�clock in the afternoon before they reached the Schwarenbach. Hari was not there. Ulrich lighted a fire, had something to eat, and then fell asleep, so utterly stupefied with fatigue that he could think of nothing. He slept for a long, a very long time. It seemed as if nothing could break his repose, when suddenly he heard a voice cry �Ulrich.� He was shaken out of his profound torpor, and started up. Was it a dream? Was it one of those strange summonses that disturb the slumber of uneasy souls? No. He could hear it still. That quivering hail had pierced his ear, had taken possession of his body, right to the tips of his nervous fingers. Beyond all doubt, there had been a cry for help, an appeal for succour. Someone had called out �Ulrich!� Then someone must be in the vicinity of the house. There could be no question about it. He opened the door and shouted with all his strength, �Gaspard, is that you?�

There was no reply. The silence was not broken by sound, or whisper, or groan. It was night, and the snow lay all around, ghastly in its whiteness.

The wind had risen. It was that icy wind which splits the rocks and leaves nothing alive on these forsaken altitudes. It blew in sharp, withering gusts, dealing death more surely than even the fiery blasts of the desert. Again Ulrich called out:

�Gaspard, Gaspard, Gaspard!�

He waited a little, but silence still reigned on the mountain-side, and he was forthwith stricken by a terror which shook him to the very bones. He leaped back into the inn, closed and bolted the door, and with chattering teeth collapsed into a chair. He was now sure that the appeal for help had come from his comrade, at the moment at which he was yielding up the ghost. He was as certain of that as one is of being alive or eating bread. For two days and three nights old Gaspard Hari had been wrestling with death in some hollow in one of those deep unsullied ravines, whose whiteness is more sinister than the darkness of underground caverns. For two days and three nights he had been dying, and at this very moment, while he lay in the article of death, his thoughts had turned to his comrade, and his soul, in the instant of gaining its freedom, had flown to the inn where Ulrich lay sleeping. It had exercised that mysterious and terrible power, possessed by the souls of the dead, to haunt the living. The voiceless spirit had called aloud in the overwrought soul of the sleeper, had uttered its last farewell, or, perhaps, its reproach, its curse on the man who had not searched diligently enough.

Ulrich felt its presence there, behind the walls of the house, behind the door, which he had just closed. The soul was prowling around. It was like a bird of night fluttering against a lighted window. Ulrich, distraught with terror, was ready to scream. He would have taken to flight, but dared not open the door. And never again, he felt, would he dare to open that door, for the spectre would be hovering, day and night, round the inn, until the corpse of the old guide had been recovered and laid in the consecrated earth of a cemetery.

When day broke, Ulrich regained a little confidence from the brilliance of the returning sun. He prepared his breakfast and made some soup for the dog, but after that he remained seated motionless in a chair. His heart was in agony; his thoughts turned ever to the old man, who was lying out there in the snow. When night again descended upon the mountains, new terrors assailed him. He paced to and fro in the smoke-blackened kitchen, by the dim light of a solitary candle. Up and down he strode, and always he was listening, listening, for that cry which had terrified him the night before. Might it not ring out again through the mournful silence of the outer world? He felt forlorn, poor wretch; forlorn, as never a man had been, here in this vast whiteness of snow, all alone, seven thousand feet above the inhabited world, above the dwellings of men, above the excitements, the hubbub, the noise, the thrills of life; alone in the frozen sky. He was torn by a mad desire to make his escape in whatsoever direction, by whatsoever means; to descend to Loeche, even if he had to hurl himself over the precipice. But he did not dare so much as to open the door, he felt sure that that thing outside, the dead man, would bar his passage and prevent him from leaving his comrade alone upon those heights.

As midnight approached his limbs grew weary, and fear and distress overcame him. He dreaded his bed, as one dreads a haunted spot, but yielding at last to drowsiness he sank into a chair.

Suddenly his ears were pierced by the same strident cry that he had heard the previous night. It was so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his hands to ward off the ghost, and losing his balance fell backwards on to the floor. Aroused by the noise, the dog began to howl in terror, and ran hither and thither in the room, trying to find out whence the danger threatened. When he came to the door, he sniffed at the edge of it, and began howling, snorting, and snarling, his hair bristling, his tail erect. Beside himself with terror, Kunsi rose and, grasping a stool by one leg, shouted:

�Don�t come in. Don�t come in. Don�t come in or I�ll kill you.�

Excited by his menacing tones, the dog barked furiously at the invisible enemy whom his master was challenging. Gradually Sam calmed down, and went back to lie on the hearth, but he was still uneasy; his eyes were gleaming and he was baring his fangs and growling. Ulrich, too, regained his wits; but, feeling faint with terror, he took a bottle of brandy from the sideboard and drank several glasses of it in quick succession. As his mind became duller his courage rose, and a feverish heat coursed along his veins. On the following day he ate hardly anything, confining himself to the brandy, and for some days after he lived in a state of brutish intoxication. The moment the thought of Gaspard Hari crossed his mind, he began drinking and he did not leave off until he collapsed to the ground in a drunken torpor, and lay there face downwards, snoring and helpless. Hardly had he recovered from the effects of the burning and maddening liquor, when the cry �Ulrich!� roused him, as though a bullet had penetrated his skull. He started to his feet staggering to and fro, stretching out his hands to keep himself from falling, and calling to his dog to help him. Sam, too, appeared to be seized with his master�s madness. He hurled himself against the door, scratching at it with his claws, gnawing it with his long white teeth, while Ulrich, with his head thrown back, his face turned upwards, swallowed brandy in great gulps, as though he were drinking cool water after a climb. Presently his thoughts, his memory, his terror, would be drowned in drunken oblivion.

In three weeks he had finished his entire stock of spirits. But the only effect of his inebriation was to lull his terror to sleep. When the means for this were no longer available, his fears returned with fresh ferocity. His fixed idea, aggravated by prolonged intoxication, gained force continually in that absolute solitude, and worked its way, like a gimlet, ever deeper into his spirit. Like a wild beast in a cage, he paced his room, every now and then putting his ear to the door to listen for the voice of Gaspard�s ghost, and hurling defiance at it through the wall. And when, in utter weariness, he lay down, he would again hear the voice and leap once more to his feet. At last, one night, with the courage of a coward driven to bay, he flung himself at the door and opened it, to see who it was who was calling him, and to compel him to silence. But the cold air struck him full in the face, and froze him to the marrow. He slammed the door to again, and shot the bolts, never noticing that his dog had dashed out into the open. Shivering, he threw some more wood on to the fire and sat down to warm himself. Suddenly he started. There was someone scratching at the wall and moaning.

�Go away,� he said, terror-stricken.

The answer was a melancholy wail.

His last remaining vestiges of reason were swept away by fear.

�Go away,� he cried again, and he turned hither and thither in an effort to find some corner in which he could hide himself. But the creature outside continued to wail, and passed along the front of the house, rubbing itself against the wall. Ulrich dashed to the oaken sideboard, which was full of provisions and crockery, and with superhuman strength dragged it across the room and set it against the door to act as a barricade. Then he took all the remaining furniture, mattresses, palliasses, chairs, and blockaded the window, as if in a state of siege. But the thing outside went on groaning dismally, and Ulrich himself was soon replying with groans not less lugubrious. Days and nights passed, and still these two continued to answer each other�s howls.

The ghost, as it seemed to Ulrich, moved unceasingly round the house, scratching at the walls with its nails in a fierce determination to break a way through. Within the house, Ulrich crouched with his ear close to the masonry, following every movement of the thing outside, and answering all its appeals with horrifying shrieks. Then came a night when Ulrich heard no more sounds from without. Overcome with fatigue, he dropped into a chair and fell asleep immediately. When he awoke, his mind and memory were a blank. It was as if that sleep of prostration had swept his brain clean of everything. He felt hungry and took some food�.�.�.

The winter was over. The passage of the Gemmi became practicable; and the Hauser family set forth on its journey to the inn. At the top of the first long acclivity, the two women clambered up on to their mule. They spoke about the two men, whom they expected presently to meet again. They were surprised that neither of them had descended a few days earlier, as soon as the Loeche road was practicable, to give them the news of their long winter sojourn. When they came in sight of the inn, which was still covered with a thick mantle of snow, they saw that the door and window were closed, but old Hauser was reassured by a thin column of smoke which was rising from the chimney. As he drew nearer, however, he saw on the outer threshold the skeleton of an animal. It was a large skeleton, lying on its side, and the flesh had been torn off the bones by eagles.

All three examined it.

�That must be Sam,� Madame Hauser said.

Then she called out for Gaspard, and from the inside of the house came a shrill cry like that of an animal. Old Hauser, too, shouted Gaspard�s name. A second cry came from within. The father and his two sons thereupon endeavoured to open the door, but it resisted their efforts. They took a long beam out of an empty stable and used it as a battering-ram. They dashed it with all their strength against the door, which gave way with the shriek of splintering planks. The sideboard fell over on the floor with a great crash which shook the house, and revealed, standing behind it, a man whose hair came down to his shoulders, and whose beard touched his chest. His eyes were bright; his clothing was in rags.

Louise alone recognized him.

�Mamma!� she gasped, �it is Ulrich.�

And the mother saw that it was indeed Ulrich, although his hair had turned white.

He suffered them to come near him and touch him, but when they asked him questions he made no reply. He had to be taken down to Loeche, where the doctors certified that he was insane.

The fate of old Gaspard was never known.

During the following summer Louise Hauser came near to dying of a decline, which was attributed to the rigours of the mountain climate.

The Grange was properly described as a mansion, though for some reason the estate agents had omitted this grandiose word from their brochures. At one time it had stood in its own ample park a few miles from town; now the arrival of the suburbs had placed it not far from the main road, with just a few yards of green lawn to defend it.

�Beautiful,� murmured Elizabeth Stanley when she first saw it. She had a rapport with old houses and a feeling for history. �It�s early Georgian, you know. The kids will love it.�

�You haven�t seen the inside yet,� objected her husband, getting out of the car and standing beside her. He looked it over. �I should think a flat here would be pretty pricey. You know these conversion jobs�� they make you pay through the eyes and nose for a place that�s all imposing address and plasterboard walls.�

Despite his reservations, the Stanleys moved in within the month. The alterations carried out to split up the house into self-contained flats had been competently done; the dividing walls were sturdy enough to keep the five families who were living there in reasonable privacy. Plenty of the original panelling was still in place on the upper floors, though the ground floor had been gutted by earlier, Victorian renovators, much to Elizabeth�s disgust.

�They were barbarians,� she declared during the course of a breakfast-time lecture on the history of the house. �They absolutely ruined the place. And did you know it isn�t �The Grange� at all? Victorian pomposity! Shapton Hall was the original name.�

Her opinions were greeted with polite indifference. Neither of her two children had ever shown much interest in history, and Bill was decidedly non-academic.

�Shapton Road is the name of the road our school is on,� offered Jane, the oldest child.

�Yes, dear. Sophie, come on, you�re going to be late if you dawdle like that. This whole area was once Shapton Village�� St�Thomas�s, near the fire station, was the parish church. Bill, do you think we should take the kids down to St�Thomas�s on Sunday?�

Her husband raised his eyes from the paper and shrugged. �If you like.�

�Right, that�s settled then,� she said firmly. �We�ll go to morning service and look over the church afterwards.�

The professor made a final check on the circuitry. Repressing an unscientific and jubilant giggle, he threw the switch. Power pulsed in a thousand sensor beams, scanning the room. The air hummed and vibrated softly like a finely tuned web.

The world�s first �ghost machine�, as the press, ever facile, had labelled it, was ready.

He glanced at the screen. It glowed reassuringly but no image had materialized there. He was neither surprised nor disappointed. There had been no deaths in the room�� so far as he knew: how, then, could one expect to snare and record a ghost? No, his research was only just beginning. But proof, scientific evidence of which he, nay mankind, had dreamed, was finally, he was sure, at hand. His cheeks flushed. Ultimate mysteries�� he patted the control panel�� would shortly be revealed. The unseen would be seen at last.

He sat, triumphantly expectant, at the console in the centre of the room. He adjusted the scanners.

A finely tuned web�.�.�.

Abruptly there came a low knocking sound. He jumped, scattering papers, recomposed himself and opened the door.

�Puddle,� said the man. �Jeremiah Puddle. I�ve come about the advertisement.�

�Ah,� said the professor. He scrutinized the newcomer and winced.

The man was small and thin and had spots. It was not a promising start. The pale face lengthened.

�You said you could help,� the man said despondently. He flourished a newspaper at the professor; then peered at the columns, prodding them with a reproachful forefinger. ���Do You Want To End It All?��� he recited. ���For Help, Contact Professor Hamnet�.�.�.��� His sad eyes essayed a fierce glare. �Well�� I do.�

The professor hesitated, thought of his forthcoming paper, �Death, the Last Frontier: a Psychic Breakthrough�, heard the applause echoing round the Science Academies of the world, glanced at Mr�Jeremiah Puddle, and closed his eyes. �Splendid,� he said unconvincingly. �So: you�ve come to take your place in the annals of History.�

Mr�Puddle looked doubtful. �I�ve come,� he said, �for the suicide.� He gazed round anxiously. �You do do suicides, don�t you?�

The professor took his arm reassuringly. �Under scientific compulsion. I am a mere servant,� he remarked humbly; �it is Science herself who dictates the means which must be used to achieve her ends.�

�I see,� said the man, though he probably didn�t. He glanced uneasily at his watch. �When can we begin?� he said. �It�s my wife�.�.�.� His meek eyes strayed apprehensively towards the door.

�She knows you�re here?�

Mr�Puddle shuddered. �She�ll find out. She finds out everything,� he whispered darkly. He picked nervously at a spot. The spot flared. �That�s why I�ve come to you,� he said, and launched forthwith into a despairing catalogue of marital misadventures.

Mrs�Puddle, it transpired, was loud and somewhat encumbered with large limbs. She talked incessantly. She had, it seemed, talked her way steadily through their marriage, pausing only at statutory intervals to eat and sleep. Her words were as numerous as her themes were limited. She talked about Jeremiah�s faults, his failures and his passivity.

�She�s right,� he concluded. �I�m a failure. I need help. I tried the weedkiller, but it went wrong.�

The professor raised an eyebrow and readjusted his face to blend a hint of curiosity with the patient sympathy.

�Home-made wine,� said the man called Puddle. �Parsnip. I drank from the wrong container.� The ghost of a smile scuttered across his sallow features and was gone. �I was nearly happy then,� he reminisced. �Just the once.�

He sank into silence. Pathos hovered about him. The machine murmured, probed the still spaces of the room, and waited. The professor seized the silence.

�Yes,� he said. �Well,� he added. He attempted to rub his hands briskly, but he knew he was wringing them�� now that the moment had come to assist his first subject. �So�.�.�. Down to business, eh?� He unlocked and pulled open a drawer. �How�� ah�� would you like it?�.�.�. Your death,� he prompted.

Something approaching life stirred in Mr�Puddle�s eyes. He watched the professor draw forth a length of rope. The eyes dulled. He shook his head.

�Tried it,� he said. �The noose came undone. I slipped off the chair and sprained my wrist.� The memory welled up unhappily. �It hurt. And she made me go without dinner for two days.�

The spots throbbed pink with indignation.

�It was the same when I jumped out of the bedroom window.�

The professor tried to turn his yawn into a cough; he succeeded in a hiccup. �What happened?� he asked brightly.

�I fell on top of her,� said Jeremiah Puddle. The old ignominy shook his unambitious frame. �She caught me. In her arms. And carried me back into the house.�

The professor reached into the drawer. �Gun?�

�No bullets. She locked them away.�

�Bullets!� The professor loaded the gun and waved it at him encouragingly.

�Too loud,� said Mr�Puddle. �I �was deaf for a week after I first tried it.� He shuffled miserably. �And I shot the budgie,� he added, �by mistake.�

The professor�s hand twitched temptingly on the trigger. �Too untidy,� he thought and laid the revolver on the desk. He dismissed the razor blade for the same reason. His hand hesitated over the hypodermic and came to rest on the tablets. He held the phial aloft. The purple pills gave a low rattle. Speedy, silent, painless and tidy, he thought.

Enthusiasm flirted with doubt on Mr�Puddle�s yellow face. �I�m not very good at swallowing tablets,� he said. �I bought five hundred aspirin once�.�.�.�

Professor Hamnet hastily curtailed the reminiscence. �One capsule will do the trick,� he said. He filled a glass with water and offered it temptingly. �Perhaps you�d like to lie down.� He ushered the man towards the couch strategically placed for maximum exposure to the detector field.

The centre of the web.

�Make yourself comfortable,� he said, his voice as soothing and concerned as an over-fastidious nanny�s. �Rest,� he said.

�In peace,� said Mr�Puddle. �That was a sort of joke,� he explained. �I don�t often make jokes.�

Submissively he received the glass in one hand, the pill in the other.

�Is this�� it?� he asked.

The professor�s pulse changed into higher gear. This was it, indeed. The spirit of Jeremiah Puddle was poised for flight; his psychic detectors were trained on the corporeal Puddle awaiting the release. It was an auspicious moment. The professor paused. A speech, he felt, was appropriate to so historical an event. He cleared his throat. Words, however, eluded him.

�We are gathered here�.�.�.� he began. �Today�.�.�.�

�Excuse me.� The watery eyes turned hopefully upwards. �Do I swallow it now?�

The professor shook his head. �Today,� he repeated, �you embark on a momentous voyage, a voyage of discovery into that �undiscovered country�, as Shakespeare so movingly described it, �from whose�� thingy�� no traveller returns�.�.�.���

���No traveller returns,��� echoed the man. He closed his eyes and an alien look of peace and ecstasy settled over his pimpled features.

The professor stretched out his arm; it seemed the right thing to do. His voice was tremulous with excitement and a touch of indigestion. �Go forth, Jeremiah Puddle,� he pronounced. �Go forth into Death and History!�

The man raised his glass. Eternity waited.

�Hold on a sec.� Professor Hamnet caught his arm. �Don�t go yet. Your suicide note. Sign here. Thanks. Indemnity,� he murmured. �The law. Right. As you were. Bully off. Cheers.�

Mr�Puddle placed the tablet carefully in his mouth, raised his glass and gulped.

He gulped again.

A seraphic contentment suffused his face. The Puddle pimples seemed to fade and assume an otherworldly hue.

The professor watched the screen with eager concentration.

Downstairs an angry door banged; the building trembled.

The white glow of the screen remained obstinately unblemished. The professor re-tuned the scanners. He turned the gain control to maximum. The circuits hummed industriously.

He peered more closely, attempting to pierce beyond the veil.

But nothing registered on the screen.

The veil refused to part.

Then light cleft his brain. The professor rose abruptly, choking back an exultant laugh. He saw it all: there was nothing to see! That was the point. Puddle had gone. Death was final. No traveller returned because nothing survived. Oblivion not Survival: that was The Answer.

He paced the room in pursuit of ultimate truths, completing several circuits of the recumbent Puddle. His mind raced on.

Eliminate the spirit, the soul. What, then, was a ghost, doomed endlessly to walk the same walks, groan the same groans, rattle the same chains? What else, he assured himself, but a psychic recording, a dead memory vibrating eternally in the ether. But where then, he demanded of himself, was the recording of the deceased Puddle? The screen was conspicuously empty. Puddle had escaped without registering a trace of his passing.

He glanced at the face on the couch, glowing with serenity. There lay his answer! Jeremiah Puddle was happy. Too happy. Whoever heard of a placid, contented ghost? The professor found himself standing excitedly on tip-toe. The man�� the truth had to be told�� had been a failure even in his dying. He had been completely devoid of the passion, the energy, the misery needed to blaze the waves of his dying moments on to the surrounding air and become a successful ghost�� the first ghost in Professor Hamnet�s machine.

Startled, and then annoyed, the professor heard a second door slam at the end of the corridor.

He looked down reproachfully at Puddle and shook his head. Evidence. The world required proof, pictures.

What he really needed, he realized, was a research assistant who could be relied upon to die a lively, passionate, violent sort of death�.�.�.

�What!�.�.�.�

The door had crashed open and hung crookedly on its splintered hinges.

The figure was large and awesome. She seemed about to roar. Her glittering eyes lit on the body on the couch and she strode across to it. The room trembled. The roar escaped.

�What have you done with my man?�

The professor retreated. Mrs�Puddle advanced. He opened his mouth but only an emaciated squeak got out. He lunged forward and seized the revolver.

�Aha,� he said. He waved it, suddenly triumphant. A violent death! It was self-defence. And it meant a place in the annals of history.

But Mrs�Puddle was an ardent admirer of Hollywood movies of the more criminal kind. Her ungainly limbs moved with improbable but lethal dexterity. The professor staggered to his feet in the corner and found himself staring at Mrs�Puddle�s arm. At the end of the arm was the single, black eye of his revolver.

�My poor little husband,� she said. �You killed him.�

Panic surged through the professor. His nerves screamed and he gave vent to a resounding hiccup.

�My research!�.�.�.� he blurted.

�Murderer!� she said and pulled the trigger.

Eyes dilated, arms flung upwards, the professor, protesting, made his earthly exit. He was right. It was an untidy way to die.

Mrs�Puddle turned, seized her late husband and flung him over her shoulder. She thumped his back vigorously.

He coughed.

�There, there,� she said.

Then he choked.

Then a purple capsule hit the floor with a clatter.

Jeremiah Puddle�s eyes opened sadly on the world once more. He beheld his wife. His face sagged. She put him down, embraced him, straightened his tie, and took his hand.

She noticed the screen for the first time and stared at him disdainfully. �What a time to be watching television!� she said. She cast only a cursory glance at the sequence of images which now haunted the glowing screen: the cornered man cowering with upraised arms, his mouth opened wide in indignant terror�� an eternal psychic action replay.

�And a gangster film at that!� She tugged his arm. �Time to go home,� she said. �Success. We won. You�re safe now.�

Jeremiah Puddle�s spots flushed crimson.

�Yes, dear,� he said. �Success�.�.�.�

The machine purred.

There was little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that, and, even as they spoke, there came up the hill the dark figures of the farm men with shovels, on their way to dig out the sheep. In the summer, the bailiff would have been the first to call the gipsies vagabonds and roost-robbers; now�.�.�. they had women with them too.

�The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pump�s like a snowman,� the bailiff said�.�.�. �Yes, you can lie in the laithes and welcome�� if you can find �em. Maybe you�ll help us find our sheep too���

The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white against a broken wall.

The women�� they had four women with them�� began that afternoon to weave the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then, advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.

�Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?� she asked in a soft and insinuating voice�.�.�.

They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the cane back and forth.

As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch�� the nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant glazier with his frame of glass on his back�� resumed it, but still eyed her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head � la Marquise, she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked softly in the old walnut chair.

�Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough there,� the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went to the porch with the message.

�Thank you, little missie�� thank you, lady dear�� Annabel is quite warm,� said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.

It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played. The hand of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were painted on her calves of fibrous plaster. For the greater solemnity, the children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls, the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate hair�� long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down her back that she could almost sit on it. A cylindrical-bodied horse, convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a locomotive, headed the sad cort�ge; then came the defunct Flora; then came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children followed with hushed whisperings.

The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which the old lady sat. She stopped.

�Aunt Rachel��� she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and closing very tight her eyes.

�Yes, dear?�

�Flora�s dead!�

The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her faded cheeks. So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering, when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it. Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.

�I�m so sorry, dear,� Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said. �What did she die of this time?�

�She died of�.�.�. Brown Titus�.�.�. �n now she�s going to be buried in a grave as little as her bed.�

�In a what, dear?�

�As little�.�.�. dread�.�.�. as little as my bed�.�.�. you say it, Sabrina.�

�She means, Aunt Rachel,

Sabrina, the eldest, interpreted.

�Ah!�.�.�. But won�t you play at cheerful things, dears?�

�Yes, we will, presently, Aunt Rachel; gee up, horse!�.�.�. Shall we go and ask the chair-woman if she�s warm enough?�

�Do, dears.�

Again the message was taken, and this time it seemed as if Annabel, the gipsy, was not warm enough, for she gathered up her loops of cane and brought the chair she was mending a little way into the hall-kitchen itself. She sat down on the square box they used to cover the sewing machine.

�Thank you, lady dear,� she murmured, lifting her handsome almond eyes to Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel did not see the long, furtive, curious glance. Her own eyes were closed, as if she was tired; her cheeks were smiling; one of them had dropped a little to one shoulder, as it might have dropped had she held in her arms a babe; and she was rocking, softly, slowly, the rocker of the chair making a little regular noise on the polished floor.

The gipsy woman beckoned to one of the children.

�Tell the lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the rocker, and then it will make no noise at all,� said the low and wheedling voice; and the child retired again.

The interment of Flora proceeded�.�.�.

An hour later Flora had taken up the burden of Life again. It was as Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence that Sabrina, the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy�s sling. She approached on tiptoe.

�May I look at it, please?� she asked timidly.

The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within.

�Some time, perhaps�� if I�m very careful��� Sabrina ventured diffidently�� �if I�m very careful�� may I hold it?�

Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt Rachel�s chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of Flora�s funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep�.�.�. It was, somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply.

�You�ll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of arms,� her seductive voice came.

And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly; tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that almost resembled fright.

�You had to watch out for Sam,� Mr�Tuttle said. �He always had the last word.� As if held back by a stubborn hand, the door of the Cohoon house appeared to have a mind of its own, but gave suddenly and he skidded across the living-room floor beyond the rug�s reach, maintaining his balance by flailing his arms like stabilizing wings. Mr�Tuttle was the loan officer of the Cape Reveres Bank, which held the mortgage on the house my husband and I were building on Buzzards Bay, and we had turned to him for help in finding a place to stay until we could move in. Mr�Tuttle had taken us to the Cohoon house immediately.

�My cousin and I are heirs. I can�t clear the stuff out until she gets here.� With a glance around the room, he raised bushy eyebrows, a counterbalance to a balding head.

�If it were left to me,� he continued, �I�d call in a dealer and��� he opened wide his fingers�� �out.�

Built into a stand of cedars and pines, the cottage was almost invisible from the dirt road, but the immediate area in the back had been cleared to give a view of a pond where Canada geese had taken temporary refuge. The living quarters appeared to be all on one floor, but when we went down to the cellar, we found a storage area with a washing machine which looked new enough to have a gift ribbon wrapped around it, and extending the rest of the length of the house, a panelled room furnished with a braid rug, a Franklin stove, a partner to an old Hitchcock rocker, and a smoking-stand with a tray stuffed with stale cigar butts, the odour of which rested in the room since the small half windows were all nailed shut. There was also a rudimentary lavatory, an apparent refuge for Sam, for an antique shaving-cup with S.�Cohoon in gold letters on it was on the top of the toilet, and in the cupboard above the sink was a man�s comb, a razor, and a cake of Lifebuoy soap. Beside the cup was a bottle marked Listerine, which had a curious, dark colour.

With an eye on his effects, I remembered Mr�Tuttle�s remark and asked, �You had to watch out for Sam?�

�Oh, yes.� Mr�Tuttle smiled. �Myra, his wife, was always nagging him to help with something around the house. Sam wasn�t much on work. When he got tired of it, he threw things.� Picking up an imaginary object, he raised his right arm like a pitcher and sailed out his ball over the plate. An expression of male satisfaction slipped across his face and floated by me to my husband. �You women make too much of these niggling chores.�

Recalling a glimpse of several good pieces of amethyst and Early Lace glass on the what-not in the living-room, I pitched one of my own. �I notice he missed the art glass upstairs.�

But Mr�Tuttle was a lawyer, as well as a loan officer, and able to switch to a defensive ground. �Sam didn�t smash anything of real value. He had the Yankee thrift.� He chuckled. �He just kept Myra worried that he would.�

Again that look floated by, but this time it missed Jay completely. He had opened Sam�s bottle of Listerine and was sniffing. �Brandy,� he commented. He put a little on his finger and sipped. �Good brand.�

Mr�Tuttle said, �Sam never spared himself in that way.�

As we went back up the stairs, I had the feeling that there were three male chauvinists against one unliberated female: Mr�Tuttle, my husband, and Sam Cohoon. However, once Sam�s house became our lodgings, I tried to push the feeling away. If in the night I thought that I heard footsteps pacing the cellar, or the creak of a rocker protesting its swaying, and on more than one occasion caught the whiff of a strong cigar, I said nothing, as little by little we shed our city carapace. Twice Mr�Tuttle called to invite Jay to play golf in Provincetown on a Saturday, but he put him off. Meals in the old-fashioned kitchen were lazy. We swam and fished for trout in the pond and, like the geese, drifted along as if on a second honeymoon, until one day, the geese flew off, our idyllic boat grounded, and I climbed to shore.

�Look,� I said, �this place has got to be cleaned. It is filthy.�

My husband put on his tolerant-of-women�s-foibles expression. �Don�t you think you are inclined to exaggerate? Filthy sounds as if it is X-rated.�

�Maybe. But Sam Cohoon did not throw the things that are here.� I emphasized the are. I added, �Mr�Tuttle said that Sam outlived Myra by several weeks. It�s easy to see that he survived the energy crisis by saving on work.�

Jay said, �We�ve been sticking around here too much. Why don�t we take the day off and go down the Cape?�

He was looking at me with a seductive blue eye, but I happened to meet the dark eyes of a picture hanging on the wall which Mr�Tuttle had said was Myra Cohoon and thought her expression dour. I said to it, �We�ve simply got to clean.�

With a shrug, Jay put down his pipe. �It�s Saturday. If you won�t go, I may as well call Tuttle. He�s been after me to shoot a few at that West to the Sun course in Provincetown.�

�But,� I protested, �I thought that you would help me.�

�Ho, I�d only be a nuisance,� he assured me. �I don�t know one end of the vacuum-cleaner from the other.� On his way to the phone he paused with the air of a man who has found a sensible solution to female peccadilloes. �The time to do cleaning is in the winter when the weather is bad.� He raised encouraging eyebrows, but I shook my head and he made the date for Mr�Tuttle to pick him up.

While the expression filthy in regard to the condition of the house may have been a trifle exaggerated, there was plenty of work to be done. I was embarrassed to face Myra�s reproachful gaze which I thought brightened when I walked by with a basket full of clothes for the laundry. For it to be so new, she must have battled for that washing machine for years. With a flip of the wrist, I set it in motion. While it ran with that pleasant sound of work done without effort, I swept up the floor, dusted the rocker, threw the cigar butts in the trash, washed the shaving cup with Sam�s name on it, and took the bottle of Listerine with its singular contents upstairs, where I poured a little into a bowl to mix with the other ingredients that go to make a nut loaf, a favourite of my husband�s, who was now exposed to Mr�Tuttle�s denigrating remarks on women�s work. While the cake baked, I had a go with the vacuum across the hooked rug in the living-room. When the power shut off, and the whirring noise in the cellar of the washer ceased, I was about half-way across. I searched the cellar for a fuse, but there was nothing except a bunch of nails in Sam�s tool chest and an old Savage revolver. When I remembered the cake, it stared at me sullenly from the cold oven, a thick mess of paste-like stuff used for wallpapering.

Thankful that Jay had left me the car, I set out to buy a fuse, but when I opened the garage door I found in the left, flat, front tyre a long nail like those I had seen in Sam�s tool chest. Returning to the house, I tried the lights�� all out�� and discovered that the refrigerator was defrosting. I put in a call for an electrician, piled as much of the contents of the refrigerator into a sandwich as I possibly could, took my lunch and ate it beside the pond, where I fell asleep. When I awoke, the phone was ringing.

�I don�t know when I�ll get home,� my husband said. �Tuttle rammed his car into a parked station-wagon.�

�Are you all right?� I exclaimed.

�Of course,� he answered. �It�s the car. They have to replace the radiator. They�re trying to find one.� He lowered his voice. �He�s a rotten driver.�

�How was his golf?� I asked.

�The same. Takes ten minutes for every putt, and cheats on his score. We�ll be here all night!�

�All night!� I woke up to my situation. �Jay,� I cried, �come home without him. Hire a car! Take a plane! Don�t leave me alone with�.�.�.�

�What?� he asked. �I can�t hear you. I am in one of those glassed-in jobs by the road and the traffic�s starting to roll. See you later.� He hung up.

When I passed Myra�s photograph, I thought she looked worried, but what could she do? She was only a picture, but I was alone in the house with a malicious spirit which I was beginning to believe was Sam Cohoon. I tried the electrician one more time, but got no answer. I was still not convinced that I was going to be left alone in the dark, but after I had dined on tomatoes, cheddar and cold macaroni, I knew that I was, and went down to the cellar and brought up the revolver and a pile of Sam�s sports magazines, the only reading matter there was in the house. I then removed Myra�s pewter candlesticks off the mantel over the fireplace and put one in the bedroom where I read Hunt and Fish Magazine until my eyes started to close. Before I went to sleep I placed a kitchen chair over the back door knob and reversed a hanging pot of ivy from the window next to the front door so that it hung from its metal arm across the door. But, in spite of these precautions, I believed that trouble was inside the house. I awoke to a series of thuds, rapid cracks, and sounds like steps running back and forth beneath me. I huddled under the covers. If it were a burglar, what did I care? Then I remembered that, in spite of my precautions with the back door and the front, the cellar door was open. Grabbing the revolver in one hand and the candle in the other, I ran through the house to the kitchen and peered into the black abyss below.

�Stop!� I commanded, �or I�ll shoot!�

Like an angry drum, the banging continued.

�Stop!� I screamed. �I mean it, I will shoot.�

Thumping and cracking, the defiant noise accelerated into an angry crescendo. Taking aim, I fired into the cellar. There was silence. I listened, but nothing moved. With trembling knees, I sank into a kitchen chair, and held the gun pointing into the dark hole of the stairs and waited. Even a summer night can bring a chill. My teeth chattered to the tune of the cicadas as my candle burned close to the stick. It was almost gone when Jay unlocked the back door and knocked over the chair.

�I�ve just killed someone,� I said.

He tried the light switch, which gave a heartless click, took in the situation, picked up the faltering candle, and went down into the cellar.

He called up to me, �Hit the lally column and ricocheted into Sam�s rocker. Bull�s eye!� He came back up. �Say,� he said, �you could get to be a trick shot with a little practice. You must have had a nightmare.�

�It wasn�t a nightmare. There was someone down there making a terrible noise.�

�I better unload this.� He picked up the pistol and the thing went off.

�There,� I exclaimed. �You see? I�ve been alone with him all day.� Glancing down at the bullet buried in the kitchen floor six inches from his right big toe, he said, �You left the safety catch off. Alone with whom?�

�Sam Cohoon,� I said.

�No one could get in down there; the windows are all nailed shut.� Putting an arm around me, he led me to the bedroom. �You were dreaming.�

�But,� I protested, �you don�t know what happened: the laundry stopped, the cake was ruined, the fridge is defrosting, he stuck a nail in the front left tyre.�

�Sam should have put in a 220-volt line for that washing machine. Remind me to tell Tuttle. What�s that about the tyre?�

�It�s flat.�

�What a day!� he exclaimed.

He began to get undressed.

�A 220-volt line does not account for thumps, knocks and crashes.�

�There are chipmunks all over here. They can get in the walls of old houses and cause a lot of damage.�

�It wasn�t chipmunks.�

�Or,� he yawned, �bats. Anyone who smashed into a parked car, takes ten minutes to make a putt, and cheats on his score, would, in my opinion, inherit a house with bats in the belfry.�

�It wasn�t bats.�

He climbed into bed. �Furthermore,� he went on, delivering the clincher, �he�s got to be crazy. Sits in the clubhouse eating fruit salad and doesn�t see the girls go by.� He gave me a reassuring pat. �Not a leg to compare with yours.� He yawned again. �Better come next time though. A man can get distracted with someone like that.� His voice was getting sleepier. �Look at all this trouble you got us into with this cleaning fru for aw.�

�It wasn�t fru for aw. They weren�t chipmunks. It wasn�t bats. It was a nail�.�.�.� But he was pretending, or he had fallen asleep. I was not satisfied. I lay awake and listened, remembering how it had been when we first had come here�� the lazy days by the pond, the moonlit nights. The rest of the summer stretched ahead�� ideal for two, not three. What had happened to Sam?

The steps were measured and plain as they climbed up from the cellar and crossed the house down the hall to our bedroom. As if a hat were pulled off the bedpost, there was a slithering sound followed by a sharp crack and Hunt and Fish fell off the night table. I squeezed Jay�s arm, but he did not stir and the steps moved away and over the living-room floor. A draught reached across the room to us, as with a click the front door opened. Was it Sam? I had to know. Tiptoeing down the hall, I peered around the corer. His right arm encircling the pot of ivy, Sam was waiting in the doorway. With one last furious pitch, he hurled it across the room at me, but his curve ball was out of practice and it fell just short of my feet. Awakened by the crash, Jay appeared at my side.

�Sam has gone,� I said.

Jay put his arm around me. �Better stick close to Papa,� he murmured. �He might come back. Remember what Tuttle said. �You had to watch out for Sam.���

But I was certain that Sam was on his way to find Myra. The way I figured it, when I moved his things, Sam got mad. He had been so comfortable down there, that until I shot him, and square between the eyes, Sam did not know that he was dead.

The house was due to be demolished in six months, but our landlord, Mr�Scott, still ran his gents� hairdressing business on the ground floor even though Eileen�s Ladies� Hairdressing had already moved from its salon on the first floor. Simon and I had a bedroom each on the second and top floor, with our kitchen and living-room down in the basement. Our rent was remarkably low for such spacious furnished accommodation in Oxford, and so I considered it excellent luck when Simon asked me to share it with him after his intended flatmate from his own College had left Oxford for a year off.

Lizzy, on the other hand, disliked 28 Tower Street from the start because it was so primitive. It had no bathroom, and the basement was damp. The bedrooms were three floors above the basement and the outside lavatory, but it had better cooking facilities than Lizzy�s bedsit. So we slept at 28 Tower Street and had baths at her place or in College. Lizzy was a Modern Linguist from St�Hugh�s and I was reading English at John�s. I was immediately attracted to Lizzy by her vivacity and her wit, by her big brown eyes and her long straight brown hair which she periodically made me beg her to keep growing.

The evening before Simon arrived, I returned late to find my door key wouldn�t turn in the lock. I tried lifting the door up fractionally by the doorhandle, but the key still wouldn�t turn. I knocked irritably on the door and rattled it by the handle. Finally, I rang Lizzy�s bicycle bell, or rather I made it give a series of whirring pings.

No lights had gone on in the house, but Lizzy suddenly opened the door and rushed out. She was obviously extremely scared. She had difficulty telling me what was wrong and I had trouble persuading her back into the house. The meter had run out, so we went downstairs together by the light of her bike lamp and I put a 10p piece in the meter.

Apparently Lizzy had been reading in bed when she heard some youths belching and singing outside in Tower Street. As it was just after closing time, she decided for safety�s sake to put the catch down on the front door, and then she went back to bed. Within five minutes the lights in the house went out. Until she realized that the meter had run out, this had worried Lizzy. But when she couldn�t find the 10p piece which she was sure she had in her purse, she became uncontrollably frightened. She dressed and decided to walk to meet me, when suddenly she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She was convinced they were a man�s, but she was sure they weren�t mine. The man whistled a Mozart concerto perfectly in tune for about a minute and then the noise just stopped. The man did not appear to go away. For five minutes there was complete silence until I knocked on the door. Privately I thought her fears were entirely corny, prompted by such spooky clich�s as the empty house, the nearby church, which had some recently reopened graves, and the locked and deserted first floor. All it needed was Wolf Mankiewicz and his Orchestra locked away in Eileen�s empty Ladies� Hairdressing Salon on the first floor to play some suitably sepulchral chords, and the place would be an ideal set for a horror film, I thought. So I tried to persuade Lizzy that it could simply have been someone next door coming upstairs whistling. But she was certain he had been on our stairs. She was too frightened to imitate the man�s whistling or even hum the tune for me, and later that night she refused to go downstairs to the outside lavatory without me as an escort.

The cottage was old and grey. A pear tree ran over the front of it; there was a wooden porch covered with jessamine and honeysuckle, which promised to be very sweet and delightful in the spring. It stood in a pretty garden, sloping down to a thick hedge; beyond this, and much below it, ran the lane leading up into the village. A large walnut tree and some tall fir trees shaded the cottage to the south; while the hill, on the side of which it was built, protected it from the north winds: they blew keenly enough at times. An orchard divided us from our neighbours at the back; from the front we looked over the thatched roofs of a few low dwellings to the wide valley beyond, where a lazy river wound in and out through clumps of pollards. A picturesque mill and loch lay to the left; to the right a graceful spire rose in the distance.

Such was my new home. It was chosen partly for its retirement and its pretty garden, chiefly on account of its low rental and the inexpensive neighbourhood. The nearest town was three miles off; more than that when the floods were out, as was often the case, for then the short cut across the fields was impassable.

This Grey Cottage�� called so, possibly, from the old greystone of which it was built�� had belonged to an aged man of the name of Vallyer. He had purchased it some fifty years before. By nature, as we heard, he had been close and miserly, saving up by little and little until he was reputed to be very rich. His wife he lost shortly after their marriage; and since that time he had led a most solitary life, the only other inmate of the cottage being an aged housekeeper, very deaf, and as eccentric as himself. Occasionally a married sister would come over to spend a few hours with him, but never stayed over the night. These visits were like angels� in being few and far between; but in another respect very unlike angels�, for they never took place without a quarrel, and a declaration on the part of the sister, Mrs�Bittern, that she would never enter the house again. People said her only reason for making these quarrels up, was the old man�s money. Be that as it might, virtue proved to be its own reward, for when he died it was found he had left her nothing.

The old gentleman was wonderfully fond of his garden, working in it the greater part of the day, and seldom going beyond it. It was strange that with all his love for his flowers, he should never have cared to show them to his neighbours. On the contrary, he did what he could to keep them from their sight. During his life the place was unknown land; and, consequently, the subject of much curiosity, especially to the village children. Mr�Vallyer always seemed to be on the lookout if they attempted to peer and pry through the hedge or over the gate, and he carried a thick stick, with which he would make sudden lunges and thrusts, scattering the young visitors ignominiously. It was not safe for juvenile eyes to gaze into Mr�Vallyer�s property. Another peculiarity he had. It was to stand by the garden gate in the gloaming leaning on his stick, and watching the few people who went up and down the lonely lane. No matter what the night was, under the bright frosty stars of winter, or in the mist following a heated day of summer, there would stand old Michael Vallyer.

It has been said that he was supposed to have saved money. None�� save a few pounds�� could be found after his death. It then became known that he had purchased a life annuity, which had died with him. The cottage and furniture were left to a nephew, a chemist in London. Not requiring to live in it himself, he advertised it to be let furnished. Two maiden ladies had taken it first by the month; but they had quickly given notice to leave, complaining of damp and other disagreeables. They had, however, always been considered rather crotchety people. I, with my two pretty nieces, Hilda and Cecily, took possession at Michaelmas, a few weeks after they left. We were pleased with our country home. The few neighbours were friendly and sociable. I began to look upon the little Grey Cottage as a haven of rest after a changeful and troubled life.

As our old servant, Martha, was not quite as active as she used to be, I enquired for a charwoman, to come in twice a week to assist her, and was recommended to a Mrs�Briggs. She did not do her work amiss, but her propensity to gossip was irrepressible.

�You should see the place in the spring, ma�am, when the gillyflowers and stocks is out,� she said to me one day, when I was in the kitchen making a tart, and she stood at the other end of it cleaning brasses and tins. �It looked beautiful when the Miss Jessops first came here.�

�I wonder what made them leave so soon?� I remarked. �Damp, the agent told me: but I have discovered no damp about the cottage.�

�It weren�t the damp, ma�am,� was Mrs�Briggs�s answer, and I thought her tone significant. �At first they liked it�� oh, so much: but in a little time they said they must leave. Doubtless,� lowering her voice, �the ladies had their reasons.�

�Perhaps they found it too lonely?�

�No, and it weren�t exactly the loneliness,� returned� Mrs�Briggs. �Not that altogether, ma�am.�

I asked no more; for gossip, though Mrs�Briggs�s chief failing, is not one of mine; but went on with my pastry-making. She, rubbing fiercely at the copper tea-kettle, began again after an interlude.

�Did you chance to hear nothing about this cottage, ma�am?�

�Nothing particular. Why? What is there to hear?�

�Perhaps I ought not to tell it you, ma�am; you might be scared,� returned she, as she looked at me over the kettle.

�Scared! Not I. Pray tell what you have to tell�� if it concerns the cottage.�

�Well, ma�am, it�s a healthy place and a pretty place; that�s for sure. But�� it�s about the old gentleman.�

�The old gentleman!�

�Old Mr�Vallyer. They say he is in the house.�

�Why, what do you mean?� I asked, feeling somewhat as the woman had said�� scared.

�It�s said, ma�am, that he never went out of it, though his funeral did; that he stopped in to haunt it. Folks talk of something that happened here years and years ago; some friend of Mr�Vallyer�s came from over the seas to visit him. They used to quarrel, and one night the stranger was found dead in the garden. Some thought the death didn�t come about by accident; that Vallyer knew more than he said. Anyway, it�s pretty sure he can�t rest now, but is about the place troubling it.�

I am not especially superstitious, but I confess I did not like the tale. Mrs�Briggs continued. Her tongue, once oiled, would have gone on for ever.

�The first to see him was the Widow Munn�s children; he had been dead about a month. I was at her place, helping her with a day�s washing. �Mother,� said they, running in at dusk, �we have seen the old gentleman at the Grey Cottage; he�s leaning over the gate with his stick just as he used to be.� They weren�t frightened, those young children; they told it as a bit of news. The Widow Munn looked at me, and I at her, and then she whipped �em all round, thinking it might be the best way to put it out of their heads.�

I laughed; and said the children might have been mistaken.

�So they might, ma�am,� assented Mrs�Briggs. �The next to see it was a stranger: a young man coming through the village one moonlight night on his way to London; he was walking it. He went into the public-house, down there in Greenford, and called for a glass of ale. While he was sitting by the fire drinking it, he began to talk. �What uncivil people you seem to have in these parts,� says he. �I asked an old gentleman, standing at his garden gate half-way up the hill, whether there was a public-house near, and he would not answer me; he just stared straight in my face with his glassy-looking eyes, and never spoke.� The company in the tap-room stopped talking at this, and looked at one another. �What sort of an old gentleman was it?� they asked; �how was he dressed?�

���He wore a long grey coat, with a curious little cape to it,� says the traveller, �and a spotted white kerchief, tied loose round his neck, with the ends hanging, and he had a stick in his hand. Very civil, I must say he was! I asked him the question again in a louder tone, thinking he might be deaf; but he never answered, only continued to stare at me.� It was the dress of old Vallyer, ma�am; he never wore any other, and I�ll leave you to judge what the company at the White Hart thought of it. A deal of talk went about Greenford next day.�

�Where is the old maid-servant?�

�She went away. They left her in the house to show it, but after a week or two she took the key to the agent, saying there was something she did not like about the place, and she shouldn�t stop in it. Just before the Miss Jessops took it, that was.�

�No wonder the Miss Jessops were frightened away from the cottage if such tales were told to them,� I remarked. �Why, you Greenford people must have driven them away!�

�Ah, well, I see, ma�am, you don�t believe in it. It was said the ladies saw him in the house as well as out of it, though I can�t speak for certain as to what happened. They went away all quiet and composed like; they didn�t want to be laughed at.�

As she walked along the road, Harriet knew that she was worried but she could not remember why. Nor could she remember why she was out on such a cold, wild night. She was on her way home�� that much was clear for she recognized the road which led to the cottage near the church where she lived with her daughter Elizabeth and their dog�� but where had she come from?

The air was chill and as she walked, the knife-like wind forced her to lean forward against its pressure, slowing her progress. The skeletal branches of the leafless trees leaped and danced; their clatter was the only sound beside the wind�s sobbing that she could hear. The dark clouds were torn veils dragged across the sky allowing her only fitful glimpses of the moon through the rips and rents, but there was light enough for her to find her way beside the frost-rimmed, wiry hedge.

She trudged towards the haven of her cottage thinking longingly of the blazing fire at which she would warm her bones, aching cold from the winter�s night. She thought about Elizabeth and wondered if the girl would have waited up for her. She would have done had it been Elizabeth who was out, but then, Harriet�s whole life had been devoted to Elizabeth, to her comfort and her happiness.

She tried again to remember why she was out of doors on such a night�� she was not the sort of woman who enjoyed nocturnal walks so she must have had a good reason, but the harder she tried to pin it down, the more it eluded her.

Soon she came to the outskirts of the village. She knew it was late because the cottage windows were dark and blank like sightless eyes. As she began to climb the hill towards the church and home, her steps were slowed even more by the gradient. It seemed to her that she was walking as if she were ploughing through treacle and she felt strangely weary.

As she got closer to the cottage, a sense of urgency developed and her anxiety increased. She became aware that her errand had to do with Elizabeth; she knew she had had a premonition that something was threatening her daughter�� that was what was driving her through the night. She tried to hurry but found she could not. Her limbs moved like those of a sleeper in the grip of a terrible dream.

At last she came to the garden gate which swung free on its hinges adding its creaks to the soughing of the wind. Across the lawn under the apple tree where they sometimes took tea in summer, she could see the spaniel Dainty sniffing the ground. She supposed Elizabeth had let him out. The dog looked up at her approach but to her surprise, instead of the exuberant, tail-wagging greeting he usually gave her, he stared at her, one paw raised, and then, letting out a terrified howl, he flattened his ears and ran towards the back of the house, his tail between his legs. She was not unduly perturbed by this; she supposed either that he had not recognized her in the dark or that the wild wind had spooked him.

She went to the front door which was usually left unlocked but to her exasperation she could not lift the latch; her hands seemed ineffectual, they must be numbed by the cold. No matter, she would walk round the side of the house to the sitting-room window where she thought Elizabeth must be for she could see a sliver of golden light.

She stood on the flowerbed below the window and plaintively called her daughter�s name�� �Elizabeth, Elizabeth!��� but the wild wind snatched her words away as it keened round the house. She managed to get a toehold on the brick edge below the weather-boarding and, gripping the edge of the sill, she pulled herself up to look into the room through the chink in the carelessly-drawn curtains.

She saw the logs blazing in the fireplace as they had in her mind�s eye. The cosy room was suffused in a warm glow from the oil lamp beside the fireplace. An armchair was drawn up close to the fire and sitting in it was a young man whom she had never seen before. On a cushion at his feet sat Elizabeth, leaning against his knees. His hand rested on Elizabeth�s hair which glowed like copper in the flickering firelight.

It was a calm enough scene apparently. You might have said it was the epitome of romance, lovers sitting contentedly in the firelight�s glow. There seemed to be nothing to agitate the feelings of a mother, even one as devoted and possessive as Harriet, but to her it seemed a tableau of unspeakable horror. The man whose hand rested on her daughter�s head she recognized for what he was�� evil, totally evil. She had never thought of herself as clairvoyant before but tonight her perceptions seemed to be strangely heightened. She thought she could see shadowy bloodstains on his hands, a shadowy noose about his neck.

Just then, Elizabeth looked up at the man and gave him a smile of great sweetness and trust. Harriet bit back a scream. There was no doubt in her mind that Elizabeth�s lover was, or would be, a murderer. Whether it was that he would kill her daughter or whether Elizabeth would suffer because she had given her love to one who was destined to end upon the gallows, the anguished mother could not tell. She only knew that somehow she had to warn the girl. It was for this that she had been battling against the bitter night.

�Elizabeth, Elizabeth!� she cried, but, as before, the wind snatched her words from her.

She tried to rap on the window. The effort was intense, lifting her hand was like hefting lead; however, she managed it.

The two staccato taps startled Elizabeth who leaped to her feet, staring at the gap in the curtains. The expression on her face was one of horror and alarm and Harriet wondered why it should be so. Why was there no welcome from her daughter?

Suddenly Harriet became conscious of her outward appearance. She looked down at her hand with unbelieving horror. There was no flesh on the framework of her bones, the hand she saw was a skeleton and it was hers! She heard a strangled scream and realized it was she who had cried out.

The shock caused her to loosen her grip on the sill and she felt herself falling backwards. She did not fall just the short distance from the window to the ground, it was a long, slow, tumbling fall as if it were part of a dream, and when the thud came that ended it, the jerk that wakes the sleeper from the dream, Harriet knew where she was and knew that she was in the place where she belonged, her grave. She was sealed into her coffin under the ground.

For the first time that night her spirit was tranquil. She had a sense of achievement; in spite of the immense difficulties implicit in her situation, she had managed to warn Elizabeth�� no mother could do more. At last she could rest and turn her thoughts from earthly concerns.

Georgina looked even more beautiful than usual and very young, a fact that reminded Henry that his body, if not his soul, had long since left the sunlit meadows of youth, and was now walking along the shady avenues of middle age. One long-fingered white hand rested on his left arm and she radiated that air of �I belong to you� that so irritated him.

�Will it be a large party?� she asked.

�About two dozen or so people, I should imagine. We won�t stay long.�

Georgina pouted her lips. �Oh, why not! It�s such a long time since we went to a party. Let�s stay until they throw us out.�

He tried to laugh. �You may not Like it. Remember the last one?�

�Please don�t spoil things. I promise to be good.�

�Mind you are.�

They came at last to the large house that was one of a row in a long street. All the windows were lit up.