He turned and looked at me. As he did so I was conscious that, in the most emphatic sense of the word, his appearance was peculiar. He looked as though he were a corpse, and an unhealthy corpse to boot--the sort of corpse that no man would spend a night with willingly. And this unpleasant appearance was accentuated by his ridiculous attire. Fancy a dead man, of a bloated habit of body, taking his walks abroad in a suit of checks--each check twelve inches square! I was so uncomfortably conscious that Mr. Benyon did not look a clubbable kind of man that I faltered in my speech. "You will excuse me, Mr. Benyon, if the question I am about to put to you appears to you even worse than absurd, but the members of my team have some ridiculous notion in their heads that you are a certain Tom Benyon who died twenty years ago, and who now lies buried in the churchyard. I am sure, therefore, you will forgive my asking, are you a ghost?" Mr. Benyon eyed me, and I eyed him--not willingly, but because, for some reason or other, I could not help it. At last he answered, speaking in a sort of shout, "I am." Of course such an answer was absurd--ridiculously absurd. As I sit here writing no man could be more conscious of its absurdity than I am. But _then_ it was not _that_ I was so conscious of as of a cold shiver going all down my back, and of a sort of feeling as though Providence had sent me out into the world knock-kneed. I struggled against a strong inclination to sit down upon the turf and stop there. But being at the same time dimly aware that I was making an unexampled fool of myself, I made a frantic effort to regain the use of my tongue. "Oh, you--you are a ghost! I--I thought so. Tha--thanks." How I got back to the tent I have not the faintest notion. But I do know that after that exhibition of the sort of stuff that I was made of, disaster followed hard upon disaster. The first wicket--my own--had fallen for thirteen runs. The second, and the third, had seen the score unaltered. Hawthorn was the fourth man in. He was so fortunate as to appear upon the scene just as I put my fatal question--it was to give him a chance I put it. The answer settled him--that is, if there was anything left to settle. I am not able to state exactly what became of him, but I have a clear impression that he was out at the end of the over. Moreover, of this I am well assured, that nine wickets fell without an addition being made to the score. I suppose that is, in its way, a record.