been a cheerful
companion, however, for its conversation was chiefly confined to warnings
and prognostications of evil. About once a fortnight Whibley would drop
round on me, in a friendly way, to tell me that I was to beware of a man
who lived in a street beginning with a "C," or to inform me that if I
would go to a town on the coast where there were three churches I should
meet someone who would do me an irreparable injury, and, that I did not
rush off then and there in search of that town he regarded as flying in
the face of Providence.

In its passion for poking its ghostly nose into other people's affairs it
reminded me of my earthly friend Poppleton. Nothing pleased it better
than being appealed to for aid and advice, and Whibley, who was a perfect
slave to it, would hunt half over the parish for people in trouble and
bring them to it.

It would direct ladies, eager for divorce court evidence, to go to the
third house from the corner of the fifth street, past such and such a
church or public-house (it never would give a plain, straightforward
address), and ring the bottom bell but one twice. They would thank it
effusively, and next morning would start to find the fifth street past
the church, and would ring the bottom bell but one of the third house
from the corner twice, and a man in his shirt sleeves would come to the
door and ask them what they wanted.

They could not tell what they wanted, they did not know themselves, and
the man would use bad language, and slam the door in their faces.

Then they would think that perhaps the Spirit meant the fifth street the
other way, or the third house from the opposite corner, and would try
again, with still more unpleasant results.

One July I met Whibley, mooning disconsolately along Princes Street,
Edinburgh.

"Hullo!" I exclaimed, "what are you doing here? I thought you were busy
over that School Board case."

"Yes," he answered, "I ought really to be in London, but the truth is I'm
rather expecting something to happen down here."

"Oh!" I said, "and what's that?"

"Well," he replied hesitatingly, as though he would rather not talk about
it, "I don't exactly know yet."

"You've come from London to Edinburgh, and don't know what you've come
for!" I cried.

"Well, you see," he said, still more reluctantly, as it seemed to me, "it
was Maria's idea; she wished--"

"Maria!" I interrupted, looking perhaps a little sternly at him, "who's
Maria?" (His wi