t an idle generality is always
futile--indeed, any generality usually is. You have, at least, no right
to say, 'Ghosts are all humbug.' Because you cannot prove they are. The
weight of evidence is very much on the other side."

"Sorry," said Colonel Vane, a man without pride. "I didn't know you
believed in 'em, Sir Walter."

"Most emphatically I believe in them."

"So do I," declared Ernest Travers. "Nay, so does my wife--for the best
possible reason. A friend of hers actually saw one."

Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.

"Spiritualism and spirits are two quite different things," he said. "One
may discredit the whole business of spiritualism and yet firmly believe
in spirits."

He was a narrow-headed, clean-shaven man with grey hair and moustache.
He had a small body on very long legs, and though a veteran now, was
still one of the best game shots in the West of England.

Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir Walter
himself summed up.

"If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the dead,"
he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these spirits, to call
them from the next world back to ours, and to consult people who profess
to be able to do so--extremely doubtful characters, as a rule--that I
think is much to be condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums
of communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should
always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a charlatan.
But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been recognized by
the living, who shall deny?

"My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience. He
actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and his
greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine, appeared to
him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance could not say that
he heard words uttered, but he certainly recognized his dead friend as
he stood by his bedside, and he received into his mind a clear warning
before the vision disappeared. Is that so, Tom?"

"Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the man in New
York--told four others about it, and three took his tip and didn't sail.
The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He came out all right."

"The departed are certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly
persons--nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted Travers.
"But I will never believe they are at our beck and call, to bang
tamb