"I deprecate that attitude, Vane. It may certainly be that our ghost is a humbug, or, rather, that we have no such thing as a ghost at all. And that is my own impression. But an idle generality is always futile--indeed, any generality usually is. You have, at least, no right to say, 'Ghosts are all humbug.' Because you cannot prove they are. The weight of evidence is very much on the other side." "Sorry," said Colonel Vane, a man without pride. "I didn't know you believed in 'em, Sir Walter." "Most emphatically I believe in them." "So do I," declared Ernest Travers. "Nay, so does my wife--for the best possible reason. A friend of hers actually saw one." Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke. "Spiritualism and spirits are two quite different things," he said. "One may discredit the whole business of spiritualism and yet firmly believe in spirits." He was a narrow-headed, clean-shaven man with grey hair and moustache. He had a small body on very long legs, and though a veteran now, was still one of the best game shots in the West of England. Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir Walter himself summed up. "If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the dead," he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these spirits, to call them from the next world back to ours, and to consult people who profess to be able to do so--extremely doubtful characters, as a rule--that I think is much to be condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums of communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a charlatan. But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been recognized by the living, who shall deny? "My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience. He actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and his greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine, appeared to him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance could not say that he heard words uttered, but he certainly recognized his dead friend as he stood by his bedside, and he received into his mind a clear warning before the vision disappeared. Is that so, Tom?" "Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the man in New York--told four others about it, and three took his tip and didn't sail. The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He came out all right."