This fancy was of a twofold character. One was, that since I was in for testing, I would go over there and test my nerves; the other was an idea that, since I had been launched into the regions of the marvellous, possibly it might be made manifest to me there in those deep seclusions, on that spot,—a revelation that would lift the veil of mystery that enshrouded the fate of the two unfortunates, and also unravel the difficult maze in which I had been involved. Perhaps I would see that figure there,—that figure a parent, or relative of the girl, who had come to me that night, impressing me to the interview. I could not but think of the spiritualistic theory of the sympathies between the living and the dead,—the theory indeed of all Christian, and, for that matter, of all heathen sects, and there, and nowhere else, I might have revealed to me the name of the man who had done those hideous acts. Surely, I was in a singular predicament. I had either seen a ghost, or I had not, and I felt unwilling to let things remain in the condition of unsettled doubt, not caring for the rest of my life to be the prosy relator of a ghost story, which my listener could accuse me of having left unsettled and unfinished for the want of nerve to examine to its climax. Determined upon putting my duplex test into execution, I returned to the house to inform my friends that I was going out for a stroll,—not an unusual thing with me,—and to make some little arrangement that I thought personally needful in case of untoward accidents; for, independent of the peculiar intention I was about to fulfil, there were reasons why I should not go unprepared for physical contingencies. The whole country, it will be remembered, was in a very disorganized state,—many people thrown out of employment, and others returned from scenes of strife and bloodshed, with an education habituated to deeds of violence. So I armed myself with a companion charged to the lips with a counteracting but defensive species of explosive violence,—a thing that could speak seven times, and always with effect if the delivery was good.