m curiously. It may, of course, have been due to the
terrific speed we were going, to the difficulty of holding in the horse,
but his cheeks were ashy pale, and his teeth chattered.

"Do you mean to say," I cried, "that you can see no figure walking on my
side of the horse and actually keeping pace with it?"

"Of course I can't," Mr. Baldwin snapped. "No more can you. It's an
hallucination caused by the moonlight through the branches overhead.
I've experienced it more than once."

"Then why don't you have it now?" I queried.

"Don't ask so many questions, please," Mr. Baldwin shouted. "Don't you
see it is as much as I can do to hold the brute in? Heaven preserve us,
we were nearly over that time."

The trap rose high in the air as he spoke, and then dropped with such a
jolt that I was nearly thrown off, and only saved myself by the skin of
my teeth. A few yards more the spinney ceased, and we were away out in
the open country, plunging and galloping as if our very souls depended
on it. From all sides queer and fantastic shadows of objects, which
certainly had no material counterparts in the moon-kissed sward of the
rich, ripe meadows, rose to greet us, and filled the lane with their
black-and-white wavering, ethereal forms. The evening was one of
wonders for which I had no name--wonders associated with an iciness that
was far from agreeable. I was not at all sure which I liked best--the
black, Stygian, tree-lined part of the road we had just left, or the
wide ocean of brilliant moonbeams and streaked suggestions.

The figures of the man and the dogs were equally vivid in each. Though I
could no longer doubt they were nothing mortal, they were altogether
unlike what I had imagined ghosts. Like the generality of people who are
psychic and who have never had an experience of the superphysical, my
conception of a phantasm was a "thing" in white that made ridiculous
groanings and still more ridiculous clankings of chains. But here was
something different, something that looked--save, perhaps, for the
excessive pallor of its cheeks--just like an ordinary man. I knew it was
not a man, partly on account of its extraordinary performance--no man,
even if running at full speed, could keep up with us like that; partly
on account of the unusual nature of the atmosphere--which was altogether
indefinable--it brought with it; and also because of my own
sensations--my intense horror which could not, I felt certain, have been
gener