particularly fanciful--at least, I used not to be. But sitting here I
seem, I hope it isn't a very frantic remark, it seems as though, if only
my ears would let me, I should hear--well, voices. It's just what you
said about the silence. I suppose it's the age of the place; it IS very
old?'

'Pretty old, I suppose; it's worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery enough
in all conscience; and the damp doesn't exactly foster it. It's a queer
old shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old local
stuff I have. And of course there's a ghost.'

'A ghost?' echoed Lawford, looking up.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What's in a name?' laughed Herbert. 'But it really is a queer show-up of
human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that's all.' His back
was turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping his tea between
his sentences. 'He comes in--oh, it's a positive fact, for I've seen him
myself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him as
one would a tramp in one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over his
shoulder. 'First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes
cautiously on--a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with
big hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature,
he begins his precious search--shelves, drawers that are not here,
cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no end, and quite
methodically too, until he reaches the window. Then he stops, looks
back, narrows his foxy lids, listens--quite perceptibly, you know, a
kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to open this corner bookcase here,
as if it were a door and goes out along what I suppose might at some
time have been an outside gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy,
the house extended once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quite
deliberately, treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels,
until, however far you lean out of the window, you can't follow him any
further. And then--and this is the bit that takes one's fancy--when you
have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been doing
when the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat, with bolting
eyes awaiting developments, just according to your school of thought,
or of nerves, the creature comes back--comes back; and with what looks
uncommonly like a lighted candle in his hand. That really is a thrill, I
assure you.'

'But you've seen this--you've really seen this yourself?'

'Oh yes,