g in particular. What are they?"

"What are they?" hissed Philip, whose face was livid with terror,
"they are the shades of the dead sent here to torture me. Look, she
goes to meet him; the old man is telling her. Now she will wring her
hands."

"Nonsense, Mr. Caresfoot, nonsense," said Arthur, shaking himself
together; "I see nothing of the sort. Why, it is only the shadows
flung by the moonlight through the swinging boughs of that tree. Cut
it down, and you will have no more writing upon your wall."

"Ah! of course you are right, Heigham, quite right," ejaculated his
host, faintly, wiping the cold sweat from his brow; "it is nothing but
the moonlight. How ridiculous of me! I suppose I am a little out of
sorts--liver wrong. Give me some whisky, there's a good fellow, and
I'll drink damnation to all the shadows and _the trees that throw
them_. Ha, ha, ha!"

There was something so uncanny about his host's manner, and his
evident conviction of the origin of the wavering figures on the wall
(which had now disappeared), that Arthur felt, had it not been for
Angela, he would not be sorry to get clear of him and his shadows as
soon as possible, for superstition, he knew, is as contagious as
small-pox. When at length he reached his great bare bed-chamber, not,
by the way, a comfortable sort of place to sleep in after such an
experience, it was only after some hours, in the excited state of his
imagination, that, tired though he was, he could get the rest he
needed.

CHAPTER XXIV

Next morning, when they met at their eight o'clock breakfast, Arthur
noticed that Angela was distressed about something.

"There is bad news," she said, almost before he greeted her; "my
cousin George is very ill with typhus fever."

"Indeed!" remarked Arthur, rather coolly.

"Well, I must say it does not appear to distress you very much."

"No, I can't say it does. To be honest, I detest your cousin, and I
don't care if he is ill or not; there."

As she appeared to have no reply ready, the subject then dropped.

After breakfast Angela proposed that they should walk--for the day was
again fine--to the top of a hill about a mile away, whence a view of
the surrounding country could be obtained. He consented, and on the
way told her of his curious experiences with her father on the
previous night. She listened attentively, and, when he had finished,
shook her head.

"There is," she said, "something about