Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, “No, there is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of M.R.F. must forever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition to oblige him, he must submit to a failure.”

It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. “As if,” said Eugene, “as if the churchyard ghosts were rising.”

He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt its flavour by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he stopped midway on his return to his armchair, and said:

“Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to be directed. Look at this phantom!”