school of thought, or of nerves, the creature comes back—comes back; and with what looks uncommonly like a lighted candle in his hand. That really is a thrill, I assure you.’ ‘But you’ve seen this—you’ve really seen this yourself?’ ‘Oh yes, twice,’ replied Herbert cheerfully. ‘And my sister, quite by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window here, and go shuffling along, mid-air, across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes’ concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back again—the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.’ ‘And then?’ ‘Ah, then,’ said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanning the book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned with lifted teapot, and refilled his visitor’s cup; ‘then, wherever you are—I mean,’ he added, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, ‘wherever the chance inmate of the room happens to be, he comes straight for you, at a quite alarming velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were, silts inside.’ Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over his mind. ‘“Fades inside? silts?”—I’m awfully stupid, but what on earth do you mean?’ The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight; its own darkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night, and Herbert deliberately lit a cigarette before replying. His clear pale face, with its smooth outline and thin mouth and rather long dark eyes, turned with a kind of serene good-humour towards his questioner. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘I mean frankly just that. Besides, it’s Grisel’s own phrase; and an old nurse we used to have said much the same. He comes, or _it_ comes towards you, first just walking, then with a kind of gradually accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps straight into you,’ he tapped his chest, ‘me, whoever it may be is here. In a kind of panic, I suppose, to hide, or perhaps simply to get back again.’ ‘Get back where?’