Paul Fordingbridge was evidently taken aback. This latest tale of his sister's seemed to have something more solid behind it than her earlier ventures. “You said nothing to me about this. Why was that?” Miss Fordingbridge recognised that she had scored a point and had startled her brother out of his usual scepticism. She had her answer ready. “Naturally you'd hardly expect me to discuss a thing like that over the breakfast-table, with half-a-hundred total strangers sitting round and craning their necks so as to hear better? If you will insist on staying at hotels, you must put up with the results. This is the first time I've been alone with you since I met him.” Paul Fordingbridge acknowledged the justice of her view with a nod. “Quite so,” he admitted. “And you had a talk with this fellow, had you?” Miss Fordingbridge's temper showed unmistakably in her tone as she replied. “Kindly don't call Derek ‘this fellow,’ if you please. It's Derek himself. He talked to me for quite a long time—all about things that had happened at Foxhills when he was here before the War, and other things that happened at the times he was home on leave. And part of the time he told me about Clausthal and Fort 9, too.” Her brother's scepticism again made itself evident. “Plenty of people were in Fort 9 and at Clausthal besides Derek. That proves nothing.” “Well, then, he mentioned a whole lot of little things as well. He reminded me of how Cressida dropped her bouquet when she was signing the register after her wedding. And he remembered which wedding march they played then.” “Almost anyone in Lynden Sands could have told him that.” Miss Fordingbridge reflected for a moment or two, evidently searching her memory for some crucial piece of evidence. “He remembered that we used to bring up some of the old port from Bin 73 every time he went off to the Front. He said often he wished he could have had some of it just before zero hour.” Paul Fordingbridge shook his head. “One of the servants might have mentioned that in the village and he could have got hold of it. If you've nothing better than this sort of tittle-tattle to prove it's Derek, it won't go far.” He reflected for a moment, then he asked: “You recognised his face, of course?” A flicker of repulsion crossed his sister's features. “I saw his face,” she said. “Paul, he's horribly disfigured, poor boy. A shell-burst, or something. It's dreadful. If I hadn't known it was Derek, I'd hardly have recognised him. And he was so good-looking, in the old days. But I know it's Derek. I'm quite sure of it. That medium's control never makes a mistake. If Derek had passed over, she'd have found him and made him speak to me at that _séance_. But she couldn't. And now he's come back in the flesh, it shows there _is_ something in spiritualism, in spite of all your sneers. You'll have to admit it, Paul.” Her words had evidently started a fresh train of thought in her brother's mind.