And now the first frail door that held in check the floods of memory was down, and I began to read the past. Nothing was sure yet, nothing that I clearly understood; for at first, like a man who, getting old, thinks in a circle, and so sees his childhood first and most clearly, I saw my own boyhood, that had had nothing in common with this man. But gradually I began to fumble my way blindly to the point at which he touched my life. And gradually my old horror of him swept over me, and taught me instinctively that he was something to be feared and to be avoided. Without knowing what I did, I sprang up, and made a leap for the opposite door of the carriage, with the blind determination to get out of the moving train. But before I had got the door open he had wound his long arms about me, and had pulled me back on to the seat. "Not that way!" he cried, as I feebly struggled with him. "Death is not for you--yet. Don't you understand that you belong to me; when your time comes I'll settle what manner of death you'll die. What have you to be afraid of? We're in the same boat, you and I; the world has kicked us both pretty hard; we may do better together than we have done apart. Don't be ungrateful; your loving guardian has come back to you after twenty years; we'll see life together, Charlie." I shrank away from him, and put up my arm as though to ward off a blow. "Where are you taking me?" I asked in a whisper. "To London--and back into the world," he said, seizing my upraised arm, and dragging it down, and shaking me playfully. "There's work for you to do in the world, Charlie--great work." "Where are you taking me?" I asked again, shuddering, and hiding my face in my hands. "Before your hair was grey, poor fool, and while the world smiled upon you, you lived and loved and laughed. You shall live and love and laugh again; you shall forget your prison and the fear of death that has been upon you; you shall live again." "Who can do all this for me?" I asked. He tapped himself on the breast. "I can--and I will," he said. "There was a woman you loved in those old days--have you forgotten her name?" "It was--it was 'Barbara!'" I whispered. "Barbara!" he repeated, and I did not notice the sneer that was in his tones. "Barbara it was, and Barbara you shall see again. She shall rise up in the flesh before you, and show you what love is--and perhaps something else beside!" CHAPTER II GHOSTS