"You understand that I am telling you the story precisely as it was told me, without accepting for it any responsibility whatever. I can only assure you that whilst it was being told, I was so completely held, by what I can best describe as the teller's frenzied earnestness, that I accepted his facts precisely as he told them, and it was only after I got away from the glamour of his intensity of self-conviction that I perceived how entirely irreconcilable they were with the teachings of our everyday experience. "Thenceforward, Ballingall declared that he was never without a feeling that Ossington was somewhere in the intermediate neighbourhood--to use his own word, that he was shadowing him. For the next week or two he lighted upon somewhat better times. He obtained a job at road-cleaning, and in one way or another managed to preserve himself from actual starvation. But, shortly, the luck ran out, and one night he again found himself without a penny with which to buy either food or lodging. He was struggling up Southampton Street, in the Strand, intending to hang about the purlieus of Covent Garden with the faint hope that he might be able to get some sort of job at the dawn of day, when he saw, coming towards him from the market, Tom Ossington. Ballingall shrank back into the doorway, and, while he stood there shivering, Ossington came and planted himself in front of him. "'Charlie!' he said, 'why didn't you come to Clover Cottage when I told you?' "Ballingall protested that he looked and spoke just like a rational being--with the little air of impatience which had always been his characteristic; that there was nothing either in his manner or his appearance in any way unusual, and that there was certainly nothing to suggest an apparition. A conversation was carried on between them just as it might have been between an ordinary Jones and Robinson. "'I did come!' he replied. "'Yes--but you stopped outside. Why didn't you come inside?' "'Because the house was empty!' "'That's all you know.' "'Yes,' repeated Ballingall, 'that's all I do know.' "'There's my fortune in that house!' "'Your fortune?' "'Yes my fortune; all of it. I brought it home, and hid it away--after Lily went.' "Lily was his wife's name. He spoke of her with a sort of gasp. Ballingall felt as if he had been struck. "'What's your fortune to do with me?'