The very fair young man of the train had got a name now and was Captain Douglas. When he was not blushing too brightly he was rather good looking. He was a distant cousin of Lady Laxton’s. He impressed the Lord Chancellor as unabashed. He engaged people in conversation with a cheerful familiarity that excluded only the Lord Chancellor, and even at the Lord Chancellor he looked ever and again. He pricked up his ears at the mention of ghosts, and afterwards when the Lord Chancellor came to think things over, it seemed to him that he had caught a curious glance of the Captain’s bright little brown eye. “What sort of ghost, Sir Peter? Chains? Eh? No?” “Nothing of that sort, it seems. I don’t know much about it, I wasn’t sufficiently interested. No, sort of spook that bangs about and does you a mischief. What’s its name? Plundergeist?” “Poltergeist,” the Lord Chancellor supplied carelessly in the pause. “Runs its hand over your hair in the dark. Taps your shoulder. All nonsense. But we don’t tell the servants. Sort of thing I don’t believe in. Easily explained,—what with panelling and secret passages and priests’ holes and all that.” “Priests’ holes!” Douglas was excited. “Where they hid. Perfect rabbit warren. There’s one going out from the drawing-room alcove. Quite a good room in its way. But you know,”—a note of wrath crept into Sir Peter’s voice,—“they didn’t treat me fairly about these priests’ holes. I ought to have had a sketch and a plan of these priests’ holes. When a chap is given possession of a place, he ought to be given possession. Well! I don’t know where half of them are myself. That’s not possession. Else we might refurnish them and do them up a bit. I guess they’re pretty musty.” Captain Douglas spoke with his eye on the Lord Chancellor. “Sure there isn’t a murdered priest in the place, Sir Peter?” he asked. “Nothing of the sort,” said Sir Peter. “I don’t believe in these priests’ holes. Half of ’em never had priests in ’em. It’s all pretty tidy rot I expect—come to the bottom of it....” The conversation did not get away from ghosts and secret passages until the men went to the drawing-room. If it seemed likely to do so Captain Douglas pulled it back. He seemed to delight in these silly particulars; the sillier they were the more he was delighted.