ssitated me being sent back to England. I went
down to a charming old house at Monk's Ely which my father had lately
moved into, and soon drifted into peaceful ways of country life. The
trivial little objects and customs of rustic life--those simple things
that are best of all--attracted me surprisingly.

"A delightful room full of my books and pictures had been prepared on
the ground floor of the house, but I was not often in it. Still, I
accorded to my bronze statue a prominent corner in the room, where he
frowned upon all my other possessions with that great look of
disinterestedness which only bronze or death can typify.

"A week or two passed without incident, except that again and again a
curious feeling that sometimes I was not _alone_ was present in my mind.
In a way I got used to it, because after being in the trenches and
looking in the face of death as a kind of hobby the feeling of release
and lightness that comes over one drives all other troubles clean away.
But after a while this feeling seemed to be growing in poignancy. In
fact at the end of the first fortnight I mentioned it to my father.

"'Strange you should have felt like that,' he said one night after
dinner, 'because for the last day or so, the same sensation has been
creeping over me. When is it that you have your ghostly visitor? Have
you any feeling now of such a thing, for instance?'

"We were having a smoke on the lawn ... it was a beautiful evening of
stars, and as he spoke I felt the unseen presence with terrific
intensity. At that moment the door that led from the library quietly
swung open, and just as quietly closed again, as if someone had passed
out into the garden.

"'Did you see that?' I said. 'There is not a breath of wind stirring:
odd thing that a door should play those kind of tricks.'

"My father was silent a moment.

"'You felt it then,' he said.

"'Frightfully!' I breathed.

"'Let's get back to the dining-room,' my father urged.

"Just as we got up to the house door (not the library door which opened
on the path), I saw, as I thought, a figure move in the bushes near the
library. Perhaps it would be better to describe it as a shadow ... but I
could swear that it was of a greenish colour. For one moment, from sheer
terror of the unseen, I stood frozen to the doorstep, and then my father
touched my arm and we walked in together.

"That evening, my friend Price, after his wont, dropped in. I had just
run the car roun