I was on the roof, as usual, very tired, rather dispirited, and more than half-disposed to throw up the whole affair, and go downstairs to bed. Where was the use, I argued with myself, of watching night after night in that fashion for a ghost which never came? I was convinced that I was troubling myself for a mere illusion—that the phantom had never existed, except in Janie’s imagination, or that if a trick had really been played upon my wife by some of the servants, the rascals had discovered that I was watching for them, and were too wide awake to repeat it until I should have given up pursuit. And then with my eyes always fixed upon that part of the compound where the old Dutch graves are thickest, I lit a cigar, and watching the thin wreath of smoke which curled from it into the air, sighed to think how transitory all happiness is in this world, and how seldom one’s earthly wishes, even when realised, fulfil the promise of their attainment; until I sufficiently forgot myself, and the purpose of my being on the housetop in the middle of the night, to permit the soothing influence of tobacco, added to a soft light breeze, which fanned me as delicately as though I had been a sleeping infant to lull me off into a doze. How long I slept I can hardly tell; but I know that I woke with a start and a shiver, and that the first thing I did was to rub my eyes, and quickly turn them in the direction of the tombstones and the graves. What was that which I saw wandering up and down that plot of ground, just as I had been told it was wont to do? Was it hallucination or reality? Had the impression with which I fell to sleep remained upon the retina of my eye to delude my waking fancy? or was that which I gazed upon a thing of flesh and blood? I rubbed my eyes again, and shook myself, to be assured that I was quite awake; and then I advanced to the parapet and leant well over it. Yes, it was no mistake. A female figure (or a figure dressed up so as to look like a female), clothed in white, with long dark hair streaming down her back, was feeling her way, rather than wandering up and down, between the rows of graves, and, with her hands stretched out before her, seemed to be muttering or murmuring to herself. I gave myself but time to be assured that I _did_ see it—that it _was_ there; and then I grasped my stick and loaded pistol, and prepared to descend and encounter it. ‘Take heed, my fine fellow,’ I said to myself, as I carefully picked my way down the flight of steps which led to the verandah; ‘don’t insult me, or attempt to frighten me, as you value the brains in your head, or a whole bone in your body. I can bear as much as most men when I am put to the test; but I won’t have my wife frightened out of her wits for the lives of all the niggers in the world.’