"It is therefore incumbent upon me, not in satisfaction of your curiosity, my dear Laurence, but in satisfaction of my own sense of rectitude, that I should accept this opportunity of stating the following facts. I inherited this property--as you will shortly inherit it--from an uncle, a man very much my senior. I had prosecuted my studies abroad, in the learned centres of Germany and France, from an early age. My acquaintance with my uncle was slight. I knew little of his private life. But I had reason to believe him a person of an undisciplined mind, imbued with the extravagant socialistic views current during the French Revolution, unbridled alike in passions of love and of hate. Questions of character have never interested me; I therefore made no further inquiry regarding my predecessor's private life. My own tastes and habits were already fixed. I settled myself here and continued the studies in experimental physics, philology, and metaphysics, in which I had already engaged. I also added to the collection of pictures and objects of art that I found in the house. My life has been blameless, as most men count blame. I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that my moral and intellectual integrity have been complete. Only in one connection have I been guilty, have I failed--failed, as I now confess, miserably and grossly." Mr. Rivers paused a moment. His fingers twitched as they rested upon the crystal skull. "Miserably and grossly," he repeated. "The vulgar gossip which you have heard rests upon a basis of truth. I cannot deny the existence of supernatural manifestations, so called, in one quarter of this house. They are undeniable. I have witnessed them myself." Laurence felt a queer shiver of excitement run through him. He sat very still.--"Then I wasn't asleep after all," he said to himself, "in that room last night." "The said manifestations were not only disturbing and distasteful to me; but I perceived that their existence threatened the validity of some of my most carefully reasoned hypotheses, of some of my most ardently cherished beliefs. Of vulgar physical fear, I need hardly tell you, I was incapable; but I trembled before a dislocation of my thought. It followed that I became guilty of an act of flagrant mental cowardice. I refused to submit those manifestations to scientific investigation. I never mentioned them to my correspondents. I took elaborate precautions against ever witnessing them again myself. I made a determined effort to erase the memory of them from my mind. I almost succeeded in forgetting that I ever had witnessed them. Thus I tricked my own intelligence. I lied to my own experience. I committed a crime against my own reason--a crime which I can never hope to expiate." Moved by the passion of the elder man's self-denunciation, Laurence had risen, and stood close to him. "Ah! surely you take it too hard--far too hard, sir," he said. But Mr. Rivers, looking up at him, answered sternly--