s. Tony, switch off the lights. This old house of
yours is the very place for ghosts. Now let us have it."

"Hold on," Nigel remonstrated. "Give me a chance to digest my dinner,
and--dash it all, the thing's so deuced uncanny that it doesn't bear too
much laughing at either!"

"Come along!" Six voices echoed the cry. "We're waiting, Nigel."

So Merriton had forthwith to oblige them. He, too, had had enough to
drink--though drinking too heavily was not one of his vices--and his
flushed face showed the excitement that burned within him.

"Come over here by the window and see the thing for yourselves, and then
you shall hear the story," he began enigmatically.

Nigel pushed back the heavy curtain and there, in the darkness
without--it was getting on toward ten o'clock--gleamed and danced and
flickered the little flames that had so often puzzled him, and filled
his soul with a strange sort of supernatural fear. Against the blackness
beyond they hung like a chain of diamonds irregularly strung, flickering
incessantly.

Every man there, save one, and that one stood apart from the others like
some giant bull who deigns not to run with the herd--gave an involuntary
exclamation.

"What a deuced pretty sight!" remarked Fordyce, in his pleasant drawl.
"What is it? Some sort of fair or other? Didn't know you had such things
in these parts."

"We don't." It was Merriton who spoke, rather curtly, for the remark
sounded inane to his ears.

"It is no fair you ass, it's--God knows what! That's the point of the
whole affair. What _are_ those flames, and where do they come from? That
part of the Fens is uninhabited, a boggy, marshy, ghostly spot which no
one in the whole countryside will cross at night. The story goes that
those who do--well they never come back."

"Oh, go easy, Nigel!" struck in Tony West with a whistle of pretended
astonishment. "Champagne no doubt, but--"

"It's the truth according to the villagers, anyhow!" returned Merriton,
soberly. "That is how the story goes, my lad, and you chaps asked me for
it. Those Frozen Flames--it's the villagers' name, not mine--they say are
supernatural phenomena, and any one, as I said before, crossing the place
near them at night disappears clean off the face of the earth. Then a
new flame appears, the soul of the johnny who has 'gone out'."

"Any proof?" inquired Doctor Bartholomew suddenly, stroking his beard,
and arching his bushy eyebrows, as if trying to sympathize wi