"By some one who cannot rest in his grave," was the answer. "Colonel Morris," I said, "some one _must_ be playing tricks in the house." "If so, that some one does not belong to this world," he remarked. "Do you mean really and seriously to tell me you believe in ghosts?" I asked, perhaps a little scornfully. "I do, and if you had lived in River Hall, you would believe in them too," he replied. "I will tell you," he went on, "what I saw in the house myself. You know the library?" I nodded in assent. We did know the library. There our trouble seemed to have taken up its abode. "Are you aware lights have frequently been reflected from that room, when no light has actually been in it?" I could only admit this had occasionally proved a ground of what we considered unreasonable complaint. "One evening," went on the Colonel, "I determined to test the matter for myself. Long before dusk I entered the room and examined it thoroughly--saw to the fastenings of the windows, drew up the blinds, locked the door, and put the key in my pocket. After dinner I took a cigar and walked up and down the grass path beside the river, until dark. There was no light--not a sign of light of any kind, as I turned once more and walked up the path again; but as I was retracing my steps I saw that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I rushed to the nearest window and looked in. The gas was all ablaze, the door of the strong room open, the table strewed with papers, while in an office-chair drawn close up to the largest drawer, a man was seated counting over bank-notes. He had a pile of them before him, and I distinctly saw that he wetted his fingers in order to separate them." "Most extraordinary!" I exclaimed. I could not decently have said anything less; but I confess that I had in my recollection the fact of Colonel Morris having dined. "The most extraordinary part of the story is still to come," he remarked. "I hurried at once into the house, unlocked the door, found the library in pitch darkness, and when I lit the gas the strong room was closed; there was no office-chair in the room, no papers were on the table--everything, in fact, was precisely in the same condition as I had left it a few hours before. Now, no person in the flesh could have performed such a feat as that." "I cannot agree with you there," I ventured. "It seems to me less difficult to believe the whole thing a trick, than to attribute the occurrence to supernatural agency. In fact, while I do not say it is impossible for ghosts to be, I cannot accept the fact of their existence." "Well, I can, then," retorted the Colonel. "Why, sir, once at the Cape of Good Hope--" but there he paused. Apparently he recollected just in time that the Cape of Good Hope was a long way from River Hall. "And Mrs. Morris," I suggested, leading him back to the banks of the Thames. "You mentioned some shock--"