ered,
several of them, and sat down on the old chairs, perhaps a little
carelessly considering the value of the tapestries. Then the
rustling of their dresses ceased.

Well--I had seen ghosts, and was neither frightened nor convinced
that ghosts existed. I was about to get up out of my chair and go
to bed, when there came a sound of pattering in the hall, a sound of
bare feet coming over the polished floor, and every now and then a
foot would slip and I heard claws scratching along the wood as some
four-footed thing lost and regained its balance. I was not
frightened, but uneasy. The pattering came straight towards the
room that I was in, then I heard the sniffing of expectant nostrils;
perhaps 'uneasy' was not the most suitable word to describe my
feelings then. Suddenly a herd of black creatures larger than
bloodhounds came galloping in; they had large pendulous ears, their
noses were to the ground sniffing, they went up to the lords and
ladies of long ago and fawned about them disgustingly. Their eyes
were horribly bright, and ran down to great depths. When I looked
into them I knew suddenly what these creatures were, and I was
afraid. They were the sins, the filthy, immortal sins of those
courtly men and women.

How demure she was, the lady that sat near me on an old-world
chair--how demure she was, and how fair, to have beside her with its
jowl upon her lap a sin with such cavernous red eyes, a clear case
of murder. And you, yonder lady with the golden hair, surely not
you--and yet that fearful beast with the yellow eyes slinks from
you to yonder courtier there, and whenever one drives it away it
slinks back to the other. Over there a lady tries to smile as she
strokes the loathsome furry head of another's sin, but one of her
own is jealous and intrudes itself under her hand. Here sits an old
nobleman with his grandson on his knee, and one of the great black
sins of the grandfather is licking the child's face and has made the
child its own. Sometimes a ghost would move and seek another chair,
but always his pack of sins would move behind him. Poor ghosts,
poor ghosts! how many flights they must have attempted for two
hundred years from their hated sins, how many excuses they must have
given for their presence, and the sins were with them still--and
still unexplained. Suddenly one of them seemed to scent my living
blood, and bayed horribly, and all the others left their ghosts at
once and dashed up