glas Cameron, who left me
discretion to deal with them as I saw fit. It was written indeed, as its
opening words imply, rather for his own solace and relief than with the
expectation that it would be read by any other. But, painful and
intimate as it is in parts, I cannot think that any harm will be done by
printing it now, with some necessary alterations in the names of the
characters chiefly concerned.

Before, however, leaving the story to speak for itself, I should like to
state, in justice to my friend, that during the whole of my acquaintance
with him, which began in our college days, I never saw anything to
indicate the morbid timidity and weakness of character that seem to have
marked him as a boy. Reserved he undoubtedly was, with a taste for
solitude that made him shrink from the society of all but a small
circle, and with a sensitive and shy nature which prevented him from
doing himself complete justice; but he was very capable of holding his
own on occasion, and in his disposition, as I knew it, there was no want
of moral courage, nor any trace of effeminacy.

How far he may have unconsciously exaggerated such failings in the
revelation of his earlier self, or what the influence of such an
experience as he relates may have done to strengthen the moral fibre,
are points on which I can express no opinion, any more than I can pledge
myself to the credibility of the supernatural element of his story.

It may be that only in the boy's overwrought imagination, the innocent
Child-spirit came back to complete the work of love and pity she had
begun in life; but I know that he himself believed otherwise, and,
truly, if those who leave us are permitted to return at all, it must be
on some such errand as Marjory's.

Douglas Cameron's life was short, and in it, so far as I am aware, he
met no one who at all replaced his lost ideal. Of this I cannot be
absolutely certain, for he was a reticent man in such matters; but I
think, had it been so, I should have known of it, for we were very close
friends. One would hardly expect, perhaps, that an ordinary man would
remain faithful all his days to the far-off memory of a child-love; but
then Cameron was not quite as other men, nor were his days long in the
land.

And if this ideal of his was never dimmed for him by some grosser, and
less spiritual, passion, who shall say that he may not have been a
better and even a happier man in consequence.

* * *