ents which might have beset
his good looks and good nature. He worked in his rooms at night and
forbore his old evening rambles.

As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought much
of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a sense of
his old doubts and suspicions revived. His reason had obliged him to
accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an ordinary theft; his
instinct remained unconvinced. There was no superstition connected
with his loss. His own prosperity had not been impaired by it. On the
contrary, he reflected bitterly that the dead man had apparently died
only to benefit others. At such times he recalled, with a pleasure that
he knew might become perilous, the tall English girl who had defended
Dornton's memory and echoed his own sympathy. But that was all over now.

One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past experience,
Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest gale. As he
buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of Montgomery Street, it
was not strange that his thoughts reverted to that night and the memory
of his dead protector. But reaching his apartment, he sternly banished
them with the vanished romance they revived, and lighting his lamp, laid
out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work.
He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of
uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the
noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative
knock at his door. A little impatiently he called, "Come in."

The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the passage
a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room.
Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound,
and motionless. He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw
distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling
lights in the windows opposite, the flash of passing carriage lamps in
the street below. But the figure before him was none other than the dead
man of whom he had just been thinking.

The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of
unmistakable laughter. It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet
it provoked a disagreeable recollection. Nevertheless, it dissipated
Randolph's superstitious tremor, for he had never before heard of a
ghost who laughed heartily.

"You don't remember me," sai