He did not finish. Slowly the young stranger rose to his full height, every lineament of his face clear in cold light. His whole aspect was one of steadfast command. “Stop!” he cried, in a stern tone. “I am yourself. No ghost walks save that which is what a man might have been. We throng the world. Beside everyone through life moves the image of a past potentiality, the thing he could have become had he held along another course. I am what you were, the promise of what you might have been. For forty years I have walked by your side. I have touched you and you have shuddered, I have chilled you and you have shrunk from me. Your nature has so grown athwart, all impulse has been so long gone, all that softens or ennobles so thrown off that, in almost final self-assertion, what you really were or might have been stands by your side and bids you measure stature with itself. Your life has entered upon its wintry days, but sunlight is sunshine even in December and in youth.” The old lawyer, almost shuddering, stepped back with repelling gesture. He passed his hand quickly across his eyes, and then, as if his heart had beat recall, summoning back every retreating force in quick rally, compelled but not unwilling, he turned in combative instinct to meet the stranger face to face, nature to nature, turned—and found himself alone. Once more the clerk opened the door. “Eleven o’clock, sir,” he said, “and you know the General Term this morning——” “You saw the gentleman who just went out?” asked the lawyer. “I, sir,” answered the man; “I saw no one go out.” “No one?” “No one.” “You certainly brought me a card and showed a young gentleman in a few minutes ago?” “I, sir!” repeated the clerk. “I brought in a card and showed a young gentleman in! Aren’t you well this morning, sir?” “That will do,” said Maskelyne, sternly. As soon as he was again alone he stepped to the table. The card and the letter were gone. And still he knew he had not been dreaming. A man swung high in the air was busy painting a sign upon a building not far away, and he was conscious that all through the strange interview he had watched him at work. He had seen him finish one letter and then another, and now if he found him adding the final consonant he would be assured that he could not have been asleep. He looked up and found that he was right. The man had just made the heavy shaded side and was busy putting the little finishing line at the bottom of the letter. Two men—one of rotund middle age, the other younger but yet not young—came down the steps of the Union Club one day a few weeks later. They met an old man rounding the corner of the Avenue. “See what you would come to if you had your own way,” said the elder of the two. “There’s old Maskelyne. He’s got everything you’re making yourself wretched to get. Do you want to be like him?” “No,” said the other. “Then you haven’t heard?” “Heard what?” “He’s a changed man, all within a month.”