'You were indeed a boy of mischief, wonder, and mystery,' he said, his eyes twinkling and his tone almost affectionate; 'you made the whole place alive with those creatures of your imagination. How Joan helped you too--or was it May? I used to wonder sometimes--' he glanced up rather searchingly at his companion a moment--' whether the people who took the Manor House after your family left did not encounter them sometimes upon the lawn or among the shrubberies in the dusk--those sprites of yours. Eh?' He passed a neatly pared walnut across the table to his guest. 'These ghosts that people nowadays explain scientifically--what are they but thoughts visualised by vivid thinking such as yours was--creative thinking? They may be just pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist for centuries and reach other minds direct They're not seen with the outer eye; that's certain, for no two people ever see them together. But I'm sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just as clearly as some folk see Grey Ladies and the rest flit down the stairs at midnight.' They munched their walnuts a moment in silence. Rogers listened very keenly. How curious, he reflected, that the talk should lie this way. But he said nothing, hoping that the other would go on. 'And if you really believed in your things,' the older man continued presently, 'as I am sure you did believe, then your old Dustman and Sweep and Lamplighter, your Woman of the Haystack and your Net of Stars and Star Train--all these, for instance, must still be living, where you left them, waiting perhaps for your return to lead their fresh adventures.' Rogers stared at him, choking a little over a nut he had swallowed too hurriedly. 'Yet,' mused on the other, 'it's hardly likely the family that succeeded you met them. There were no children!' 'Ah,' exclaimed the pupil impulsively, 'that's significant, yes--no children.' He looked up quickly, questioningly. 'Very, I admit.' 'Besides, the chief Magician had gone away into the City. They wouldn't answer to anybody's call, you know.' 'True again. But the Magician never forgot them quite, I'll be bound,' he added. 'They're only in hiding till his return, perhaps!' And his bright eyes twinkled knowingly. 'But, Vicar, really, you know, that is an extraordinary idea you have there-a wonderful idea. Do you really think--?' 'I only mean,' the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It's in the heart that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it-- grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys, I always say to children, or you'll surely see them.' 'Ah, in _that_ sense--!'