"A delightful room full of my books and pictures had been prepared on the ground floor of the house, but I was not often in it. Still, I accorded to my bronze statue a prominent corner in the room, where he frowned upon all my other possessions with that great look of disinterestedness which only bronze or death can typify. "A week or two passed without incident, except that again and again a curious feeling that sometimes I was not _alone_ was present in my mind. In a way I got used to it, because after being in the trenches and looking in the face of death as a kind of hobby the feeling of release and lightness that comes over one drives all other troubles clean away. But after a while this feeling seemed to be growing in poignancy. In fact at the end of the first fortnight I mentioned it to my father. "'Strange you should have felt like that,' he said one night after dinner, 'because for the last day or so, the same sensation has been creeping over me. When is it that you have your ghostly visitor? Have you any feeling now of such a thing, for instance?' "We were having a smoke on the lawn ... it was a beautiful evening of stars, and as he spoke I felt the unseen presence with terrific intensity. At that moment the door that led from the library quietly swung open, and just as quietly closed again, as if someone had passed out into the garden. "'Did you see that?' I said. 'There is not a breath of wind stirring: odd thing that a door should play those kind of tricks.' "My father was silent a moment. "'You felt it then,' he said. "'Frightfully!' I breathed. "'Let's get back to the dining-room,' my father urged. "Just as we got up to the house door (not the library door which opened on the path), I saw, as I thought, a figure move in the bushes near the library. Perhaps it would be better to describe it as a shadow ... but I could swear that it was of a greenish colour. For one moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, I stood frozen to the doorstep, and then my father touched my arm and we walked in together. "That evening, my friend Price, after his wont, dropped in. I had just run the car round to the front door and was about to run into the village to bring the vicar back to stay with us over the week-end--besides I badly wanted to get away from those infernal gusts of depression that swept the place. I did not scruple to keep to my arrangements and told Price to make himself comfortable in the library till my return. 'You'll find cigars, spirits--and _the_ spirit,' I said jokingly. He nodded and laughed, and I jumped into the car, and quickly put a mile between myself and--the bronze statue, for I was convinced that Albertus of Cologne was connected in some unearthly way with the face of Fear that often turned full on me.