familiar example--the spots I see floating
before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is
nothing supernatural in all that?"

"Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she
used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was
impending?"

"I fancy she did, and true enough too, as such spots would very likely
precede a bilious attack, which is misfortune enough while it lasts. But
still, even Mrs. Molyneux's niece, even Mrs. Molyneux herself, would
not say the fever faces, or the reptiles, or the spots, were
supernatural. And in fact the ghost is, so far, more--more _recherche_,
let us say, than the other things. It takes more than a bilious attack
or a fever, or even D.T., to produce a ghost. It takes nothing less than
a pretty high degree of nervous sensibility and excitable imagination.
Now these two disorders have not been much developed yet by the masses,
in spite of the school-boards: ergo, any apparition which leads to
hysterics or brandy-and-water in the servants' hall is a bogie, not a
ghost."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added:

"And now, Lindy, as we don't want another ghost haunting the house. I
will conduct you to by-by."

It was a strange house, Weald Manor, designed, one might suppose, by
some inveterate enemy of light. It lay at the foot of a steep hill which
screened it from the morning sun, and the few windows which looked
towards the rising day were so shaped as to admit but little of its
brightness. At night it was even worse, at least in the halls and
passages, for there, owing probably to the dark oak which lined both
walls and floor, a generous supply of lamps did little more than
illumine the surface of the darkness, leaving unfathomed and unexplained
mysterious shadows that brooded in distant corners, or, towering
giant-wise to the ceiling, loomed ominously overhead.
Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the
polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went
upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's arm, as
instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on
the first landing. Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery
where Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran "the bachelor's passage,"
where I was lodged.

"Night, night," were Atherley's parting words. "Don't dream of flirts or
ghosts, but sleep sound."

Sleep sou