"If my views on the subject have any value or interest for you," said he, "you are very welcome to know them. As a priest of the Catholic Church, I cannot accept the popular notions about ghostly visitations. Such experiences as yours in that ill-fated mansion are explicable to me only on the following hypothesis. There is a Power greater than the powers of evil; a Will to which even demons must submit. It is not inconsistent with Christian doctrine to suppose that, in cases of such terrible crimes as that we have been discussing, the evil spirits who prompted these crimes may, for a period more or less lengthy, be forced to haunt the scene of their machinations, and re-enact there, in phantom show, the horrors they once caused in reality. Naturally--or perhaps," said he, breaking off with a little smile, "I ought rather to say super-naturally-- these demons, in order to manifest themselves, would be forced to resume some shape that would identify them with the crime they had suggested; and, in such a case, what more likely than that they should adopt the spectral forms of their human victims--murdered and murderer, or otherwise--according to the nature of the wickedness perpetrated? This is but an amateur opinion, monsieur; I offer it as an individual, not as a priest speaking on the part of the Church. But it may serve to account for a real difficulty, and may be held without impiety. Of one thing at least we may rest assured as Christian men; that the souls of the dead, whether of saints or sinners, are in God's safe keeping, and walk the earth no more." Then I shook hands with M. Pierre, and we parted. And after that, reader, I went to my friend's house, and spent my Christmas week right merrily. III. Beyond the Sunset A Fairy Tale for the Times I. Once upon a time there was a Princess. Now, this Princess dwelt in a far-off and beautiful world beyond the sunset, and she had immortal youth and an ancestry of glorious name. Very rich, too, she was, and the palace in which she lived was made all of marble and alabaster and things precious and wonderful. But that which was most wonderful about her was her exceeding beauty,--a beauty not like that one sees in the world this side of the sunset. For the beauty of the Princess was the bright-shining of a lovely spirit; her body was but the veil of her soul that shone through all her perfect form as the radiance of the sun shines through clear water. I cannot tell you how beautiful this Princess was, nor can I describe the color of her hair and her eyes, or the aspect of her face. Many men have seen her and tried to give an account of her; but though I have read several of these accounts, they differ so greatly from one another that I should find it hard indeed to reproduce her picture from the records of it which her lovers have left.