ting.)

STRANGER. Are you sure?

DOCTOR. Perfectly. I've followed your literary career from the first
with great interest; as I know my wife has told you. So that if we _had_
met I'd certainly have remembered your name. (Pause.) Well, now you can
see how a country doctor lives!

STRANGER. If you could guess what the life of a so-called liberator's
like, you wouldn't envy him.

DOCTOR. I can imagine it; for I've seen how men love their chains.
Perhaps that's as it should be.

STRANGER (listening). Strange. Who's playing in the village?

DOCTOR. I don't know. Do you, Ingeborg?

LADY. No.

STRANGER. Mendelssohn's Funeral March! It pursues me. I never know
whether I've heard it or not.

DOCTOR. Do you suffer from hallucinations?

STRANGER. No. But I'm pursued by trivial incidents. Can't you hear
anyone playing?

DOCTOR. Yes.

LADY. Someone _is_ playing. Mendelssohn.

DOCTOR. Not surprising.

STRANGER. No. But that it should be played precisely at the right place,
at the right time.... (He gets up.)

DOCTOR. To reassure you, I'll ask my sister. (Exit through the
verandah.)

STRANGER (to the LADY). I'm stifling here. I can't pass a night under
this roof. Your husband looks like a werewolf and in his presence you
turn into a pillar of salt. Murder has been done in this house; the
place is haunted. I shall escape as soon as I can find an excuse.

(The DOCTOR comes back.)

DOCTOR. It's the girl at the post office.

STRANGER (nervously). Good. That's all right. You've an original house.
That pile of wood, for instance.

DOCTOR. Yes. It's been struck by lightning twice.

STRANGER. Terrible! And you still keep it?

DOCTOR. That's why. I've made it higher out of defiance; and to give
shade in summer. It's like the prophet's gourd. But in the autumn it
must go into the wood shed.

STRANGER (looking round). Christmas roses, too! Where did you get them?
They're flowering in summer! Everything's upside down here.

DOCTOR. They were given me by a patient. He's not quite sane.

STRANGER. Is he staying in the house?

DOCTOR. Yes. He's a quiet soul, who ponders on the purposelessness
of nature. He thinks it foolish for hellebore to grow in the snow and
freeze; so he puts the plants in the cellar and beds them out in the
spring.

STRANGER. But a madman... in the house. Most unpleasant!

DOCTOR. He's very harmless.

STRANGER. How did he lose his wits?

DOCTOR. Who can tell. It's a disease of the mind,