A strong friendship grew up between me and Forrester. We were both idlers, and we discovered that, by a happy coincidence, our literary tastes--if an industrious prosecution of desultory and unprofitable reading may be dignified by such a term--lay in the same channels. He was as deeply learned in the literature of the marvelous as I was myself; and during the summer evenings we used to take long walks into the country, beguiling the way by discussions upon a variety of wonderful matters which we turned up out of our old stores. The exercise at least was healthy, and the very disputations upon the evidence and likelihood of these things strengthened my faculties, and cleared off some clouds of credulity. This collision with another mind was a novelty to me, and, for a time, diverted me from other thoughts. At our tavern Forrester and I enjoyed distinguished popularity. Every body listened to our opinions with attention, not so much because they were remarkable for their soundness, as because they were generally opposed to established notions, and were urged with earnestness. We always spoke like men who speak out of their convictions, while most of the others argued merely for argument's sake, and were ready to take any side of a question for the pleasure of getting up a controversy, and showing off their ingenuity. One evening the conversation turned upon the possibility of the dead revisiting the earth, and the theory of manifest warnings before dissolution. The debate, which began in levity, soon took a more serious tone, and we had been arguing a full hour before I discovered that Forrester and I had engrossed the discussion to ourselves, the rest of the company maintaining a profound silence, and listening to our observations with undisguised wonder and astonishment. This discovery abashed me a little, for I never meant to make such a display, and I looked across at Forrester for the purpose of drawing his attention to the circumstance. I perceived, then, for the first time, that his face had undergone an extraordinary change. The natural pallor had taken an almost livid hue. The ordinary placidity of his features had given place to an expression of severe pain and alarm. "What is the matter?" I inquired. "Are you ill?" "No. Why do you ask?" "You look dreadfully pale." He only smiled at this remark--but it was a ghastly smile. "I know that something is the matter," I cried. "What is it, Forrester?" "Nothing. What can be the matter? Are we not all living men talking upon equal terms, and in the best possible humor, about the dead? Why should that affect me more than any body else?" "I know not why it should," I replied, "but I feel it does."