The hand that held the paper was by this time hidden in the folds of her skirt. She turned and sped lightly along the corridor to the trunk-loft. Save for the voice, it was a precise repetition of what had happened the day before. “Certainly,” I said; but I did not turn away until she had disappeared into the trunk-loft. I went to the telephone and gave the message; it took only a few seconds. Then I went to my own room, leaving the door open so that I commanded the hall. In a few minutes Mrs. Lithway came down the stairs from the third story. “Did you telephone?” she asked accusingly, as she caught my eye. I bowed. She passed on into Lithway’s room. There was no paper in her hand. I knew that this time there had been no ghost. Well.... Lithway, as every one knows, died under the ether. His heart suddenly and unaccountably went back on him. He left no will; and, as he had no relations except the cousin whom he had married, everything went to her. I had once, before his second marriage, seen a will of Lithway’s, myself; but I didn’t care to go into court with that information, especially as in that will he had left me his library. I should have liked, for old sake’s sake, to have Lithway’s library. His widow sold it, and it is by now dispersed about the land. She told me, after the funeral, that she should go on at Braythe, that she never wanted to leave it; but, for whatever reason, she did, after a few years, sell the place suddenly and go to Europe. I have never happened to see her since she sold it, and I did not know the people she sold it to. The house was burned many years ago, I believe, and an elaborate golf-course now covers the place where it stood. I have not been to Braythe since poor Lithway was buried. I took the hunting-trip that Lithway had been so violently and inexplicably opposed to. I think I was rather a fool to do it, for I ought to have realized, after Lithway’s death, the secret of the house, its absolutely unique specialty. But such is the peacock heart of man that I still, for myself, trusted in “common sense”--in my personal immunity, at least, from every supernatural law. Indeed, it was not until I had actually encountered my savage, and got the wound I bear the scar of, that I gave entire credence to Lithway’s tragedy. I put some time into recovering from the effect of that midnight skirmish in the jungle, and during my recovery I had full opportunity to pity Lithway.