ourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead as we ring
up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable and indecent.
Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that way, or tell us the
present position or occupation and interests of a dead man--or what he
smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such ideas degrade our impressions
of life beyond the grave. They are, if I may say so, disgustingly
anthropomorphic. How can we even take it for granted that our spirits
will retain a human form and human attributes after death?"

"It would be both weak-minded and irreligious to attempt to get at these
things, no doubt," declared Colonel Vane.

"And they make confusion worse confounded by saying that evil spirits
pretend sometimes to hoodwink us by posing as good spirits. Now, that's
going too far," said Henry Lennox.

"But your own ghost, Sir Walter?" asked Fayre-Michell. "It is a curious
fact that most really ancient houses have some such addition. Is it
a family spectre? Is it fairly well authenticated? Does it reign in a
particular spot of house or garden? I ask from no idle curiosity. It
is a very interesting subject if approached in a proper spirit, as the
Psychical Research Society, of which I am a member, does approach it."

"I am unprepared to admit that we have a ghost at all," repeated Sir
Walter. "Ancient houses, as you say, often get some legend tacked on to
them, and here a garden walk, or there a room, or passage, is associated
with something uncanny and contrary to experience. This is an old Tudor
place, and has been tinkered and altered in successive generations.
We have one room at the eastern end of the great corridor which always
suffered from a bad reputation. Nobody has ever seen anything in our
time, and neither my father nor grandfather ever handed down any story
of a personal experience. It is a bedroom, which you shall see, if you
care to do so. One very unfortunate and melancholy thing happened in it.
That was some twelve years ago, when Mary was still a child--two years
after my dear wife died."

"Tell us nothing that can cause you any pain, Walter," said Ernest
Travers.

"It caused me very acute pain at the time. Now it is old history and
mercifully one can look back with nothing but regret. One must, however,
mention an incident in my father's time, though it has nothing to do
with my own painful experience. However, that is part of the story--if
story it can be called. A death