“Then there are two.” I didn’t really believe it, but it seemed clear that we could never settle the dispute. Each at least would have to pretend to believe the other for the sake of peace. “Suppose you tell me about your ghost,” I suggested soothingly. But Lithway was dogged, and we had to spend an hour exploring the house and counting up Lithway’s valuables. Needless to say, there was no sign of invasion anywhere. At the end of the hour I repeated my demand. The scar was beginning to fade, I noted in the mirror, though still clearly visible. “Suppose you tell me about _your_ ghost. You never have, you know.” “I’ve only seen her a few times.” “Where?” “Leaning over the banisters in the third-floor hall.” “What is she like?” “A slip of a girl. Rather fair and drooping, but a strange look in her eyes. Dressed in white, with a blue sash. That’s all.” “Does she speak?” “No; but she waves a folded paper at me.” “What time of day have you seen her?” “About eleven in the morning.” The clocks were then striking twelve. “Well,” I ventured, “that’s clearly the ghost’s hour. But the two of them couldn’t be more different.” He made me describe the savage again. The extraordinary part of it was that, in spite of his baffling blackness, I could do so perfectly. He was as individual to me as a white man--more than that, as a friend. He had personality, that ghost. “What race should you say he was?” I thought. “Some race I don’t know; Zulu, perhaps. A well-built beggar.” “And you’re perfectly sure he was real--I mean, wasn’t human?” The distinction made me smile, though the question irritated me. “You can see that if his object was murder he made a poor job. You found all your silver, didn’t you?” Then I played my trump-card. “And do you suppose that a burglar would wander round this countryside in a nose-ring and a loincloth? Nice disguise!” Lithway looked disturbed. “But the other one,” he murmured. “I don’t understand the other.” “She seems much easier to understand than mine,” I protested. “Oh, I don’t mean _her_!” he said. “I mean _it_.” For the first time I began to be afraid that Lithway had left the straight track of common sense. It was silly enough to have two ghosts in a new house--but three! “It?” I asked. “The one Wender saw.” “Oh! Wender has seen one?” “Six months ago. I’ve never been able to get him here since. It _was_ rather nasty, and Wender--well, Wender’s sensitive. And he’s a little dotty on the occult, in any case.” “Did he see it at eleven in the morning?” Lithway seemed irritated. “Of course!” he snapped out. He spoke as if the idiosyncrasy of his damned house had a dignity that he was bound to defend. “And what was it?” “A big rattlesnake, coiled to strike.” Even then I could not take it seriously. “That’s not a ghost; it’s a symptom.” “It _did_ strike,” Lithway went on. “Did he have a scar?” “No. He couldn’t even swear that it quite touched him.” “Then why did it worry him?”