We were in our tunnels, taking advantage of the dry weather to get piles of our wash dirt out ready for sluicing in the wet season, and were working till nightfall. On a still, fair evening, which reminded me of the night he vanished, we were returning jaded from our long work and had just issued from the belt of bush that fringed our clearing when the moon rose above the peaks on the other side of the fiord and flashed a shuttle of gold across the waters. Raising our eyes to our huts, we stopped thunderstruck. Was that but a lunar effect on the throne-like cliff in front of them? It could not be a spirit; we had never heard of ghosts in these new lands, nor could the belief in them seize hold of minds so accustomed as ours were to deal with the rougher and more material elements of nature. We shook off our trance, and stepped forward. The sound of our footsteps made the figure move and as he turned in the moonlight we recognised our lost friend (his apparition, we first supposed). But he rose with his old quiet and dignified salute of welcome, and joining us as we sat at our evening meal, we talked as if he had parted with us only that morning. We had not the hardihood to ask him what had become of him these long months. But I noticed that he had more of his old semi-transparency of tissue and ethereality of hue, and in his eyes, as he ceased from talking, there was a baffled look I had never seen before in them. He would lapse more frequently into deep reverie. He seemed to have gone through a lifetime of effort and suffering, and his spirit was, I could see, weary and sore within him. He shrank at first from all reference to his life within the circle of mist out on the Pacific. It seemed now to be a painful memory. There was a pathos in his tone as he spoke far keener than I had noted in it before. But gradually I drew him into reminiscence of it when we were alone in the bush, and he seemed after a time to find consolation in thinking and speaking about it, especially when he talked of the spiritual side of the civilisation in the midst of which he had lived for so many years.