e dead man words--"what a colossal
humbug. You and your nice Sunday go-to-meeting thoughts. It's so easy,
isn't it? to dress up one's rottenness in pretty sentimental twaddle.
But you don't deceive anybody. You don't even deceive yourself, not
for three minutes at a stretch. You know that underneath all your
humbugging pretenses the black sin is unchanged. You are no better and
no worse than I was. You are exactly the same as me."

And Dale, breaking his own rule, or forgetting in his anger that he
had refused to discuss things with this imaginary voice, answered
wrathfully.

"This girl cares for me--that's the difference between us. She offers
me love. And that's something you never had."

"How do you know?" said the dead man. "Your Mavis was one of many.
And, besides, don't be so sure that Mavis wasn't fond of me. She never
ran away from me. She came when I whistled for her."

Dale brandished his arms wildly, turned round, and stared at the
pine-trees and the bracken. It seemed to him that some imperishable
essence of the man was really here, mingling with the shadows,
floating in the dusky air; and that possibly over there among the
rocks, if one went to look for it, one might see a simulacrum of the
man's bodily shape--perhaps only a gray shadowy outlined form, the
odious stranger of dreams, but more vague than in the dreams,
stretched on his back, holding up his blood-stained boots, and
grinning all over his battered face.

"Yes, perhaps so," said the voice. "But I notice that you don't come
in to look for me. You keep to the ride still. Now you've got so very
close to me, why do you turn shy of the last little bit? Is it that
you wish me to save you trouble by showing myself?"

And Dale made gestures of semi-insane fury, and spoke in a loud,
hoarse voice.

"Yes, show yourself if you want to. You 'aarve my leave. Come out an'
stan' here before me. I'm not afraid of you--now or hereafter."

"Hereafter--hereafter--hereafter." As Dale moved away slowly, the dead
man seemed to mock him, to laugh at him derisively. "Hereafter--yes,
that's a big word. Yes, go and talk that out with God."

He went up one of the narrow tracks that led toward the dead man's
Orphanage, intending to look at it and perhaps hear again the evening
hymn; but before he got to those broken fences he turned and began to
wander aimlessly through the trees. All his mind was now full of the
awful thought of God, and of the eternal punishment