It chanced that I was also an eyewitness to this, the first of the ghosts of '46. My name is Robert Manse. I was twenty-six years old that winter--correspondent in the New York office of a Latin-American export house. With Wilton Grant and his sister Beatrice--whom I counted the closest of my few real friends--I was in Rutland that Saturday evening. Will was a chemist; some business which he had not detailed to me had called him to Vermont from his home near New York. In spite of the snowy roads he had wanted to drive up, and had invited me to go along. We were dining in the Rutland Hotel when people began talking of this ghost out toward Procter. It was about ten-thirty when we arrived at the farm. Cars were lined along the road in both directions. People trampling the road, the fields, clustering about the farmhouse; talking, shouting to one another. The field itself was jammed, but down by the willows along the creek there was a segment of snow as yet untrampled, for the crowd had dared approach so far but no farther. Even at this distance we could see the vague white blot of the apparition. Will said, "Come on, let's get down nearer. You want to go, Bee?" "Yes," she said. We began elbowing and shoving our way through the crowd. It was snowing again now. Dark; but some of the people had flashlights which darted about; and occasionally a smoker's match would flare. The crowd was good-natured; with courage bolstered by its numbers, the awe of the supernatural was gone. But they all kept at a safe distance. Somebody said, "Why don't they shoot at it? It won't move--can't they make it move?" "It does move--I saw it move, it turned its head. They're going up to it pretty soon--see what it is." I asked a man, "Has it made any sound?" "No," he said. "They claim it moaned, but it didn't. The police are there now, I think--and they're going to shoot at it. I don't see what they're afraid of. If they wanted me to I'd walk right up to it." He began elbowing his way back toward the road. * * * * * We found ourselves presently at the front rank, where the people were struggling to keep themselves from being shoved forward by those behind them. Thirty feet across the empty snow was the ghost. It seemed, as they had said, the figure of a man, blurred and quivering as though moulded of a heavy white mist at every instant about to dissipate. I stared, intent upon remembering what I was seeing. Yet it was difficult. With a quick look the imagination seemed to picture the tall lean figure of a man with folded arms, meditatively leaning against the tree-trunk. But like a faint star which vanishes when one stares at it, I could not see a single detail. The clothes, the face, the very outlines of the body itself seemed to quiver and elude my sight when I concentrated my attention upon them.