here," he said, and I could swear his lips
trembled. "I've tried to go to sleep there, often and often. And, you
know, I couldn't, sir--never. I've thought if I could go to sleep there,
there might be something. But I've sat up there and laid up there, and
I couldn't--not for thinking and longing. It's the longing.... I've
tried--"

He blew, drank up the rest of his whisky spasmodically, stood up
suddenly and buttoned his jacket, staring closely and critically at the
cheap oleographs beside the mantel meanwhile. The little black notebook
in which he recorded the orders of his daily round projected stiffly
from his breast pocket. When all the buttons were quite done, he patted
his chest and turned on me suddenly. "Well," he said, "I must be going."

There was something in his eyes and manner that was too difficult for
him to express in words. "One gets talking," he said at last at the
door, and smiled wanly, and so vanished from my eyes. And that is the
tale of Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland just as he told it to me.

6. THE STORY OF THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST

The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story comes back very
vividly to my mind. There he sat, for the greater part of the time,
in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire, and
Sanderson sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his name.
There was Evans, and that marvel among actors, Wish, who is also a
modest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club that Saturday
morning, except Clayton, who had slept there overnight--which indeed
gave him the opening of his story. We had golfed until golfing was
invisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquil kindliness
when men will suffer a story. When Clayton began to tell one, we
naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed he was lying--of
that the reader will speedily be able to judge as well as I. He began,
it is true, with an air of matter-of-fact anecdote, but that we thought
was only the incurable artifice of the man.

"I say!" he remarked, after a long consideration of the upward rain of
sparks from the log that Sanderson had thumped, "you know I was alone
here last night?"

"Except for the domestics," said Wish.

"Who sleep in the other wing," said Clayton. "Yes. Well--" He pulled at
his cigar for some little time as though he still hesitated about his
confidence. Then he said, quite quietly, "I caught a ghost!"

"Caught a ghost, did you?" s