He shook his head. Perhaps he had no formulated speculations of ghosts. "Goblins?" He still looked doubtful, and I went into detail. "Horns?" I asked. He nodded, and shook convulsively. "Big mouth, with teeth?" "Yes, and hair--long hair. And dirty, oh, so dirty." "Did it have hands, or were they all feet?" I asked, enjoying the joke immensely; for in my babyhood I had felt these fears and seen these things. "Claws," he answered, "like the cat, only bigger, and all bluggy--all bluggy." "Tell us more, Freddie," I went on. "I couldn't see him very well, in that dark corner." "He looked at me," answered Freddie, shivering in his mother's arms, "and he opened his eyes, until they were all white, and he opened his mouth, until it was all teeth. And he wanted to bite me. I knew he wanted to bite me." "Did he have horns, Freddie?" I persisted. "Yes--horns on his head, and wings--dirty wings, with claws. But when you kicked him, he looked at you and wanted to bite you; but you made him run. He backed out the door. Didn't you see?" "Oh, see," I answered bravely, though my heart was beating rather fast, and my tongue somewhat dry against the roof of my mouth. "Don't ever be afraid while I'm around, Freddie. I'll take care of you." Then his mother took me by the ear, led me out, and banished me, saying that if I taught her little boy any such nonsense I must stay away. That night, in my darkened bedroom, I saw things myself--things with claws, and horns, and wings, and eyes. But as I had seen them since my earliest remembrance, and had only drawn upon my experiences in my suggestions to Freddie, I managed to banish them and go to sleep, not knowing then that Freddie, my pet playmate, had gathered up these primordial memories from me, and delivered them back. Later on I understood. My banishment was thorough, and enforced to the limit. I saw little of Freddie through the years of boyhood, only hearing at times that he was a model boy, an example of good behavior to his fellow schoolmates, and a reproach to me, a black sheep of a family in which were no ewes or lambs. My father was a policeman, my two brothers firemen, and my mother a woman of such soul and character that she could master the four of us. She thrashed me through high school, but I evaded the ministry, for which she was preparing me, by running away to sea at the age of eighteen. I was a second mate when I met Freddie again. It was when I, with the first mate of the schooner I belonged to, and two of the crew, were returning from an evening at the theater, that we passed a group of young men, smoking cigarettes, and one of the men said: "Get onto the dudes." One of them promptly followed, spoke a few sharp, incisive words, and gave the critic such a thrashing as astonished us all. It was Freddie, twenty years old, well-dressed and gentlemanly, but with an aggressiveness that never found warrant in his childhood. When he had licked the man, I talked with him amicably.