it. There may be
disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no
longer control. If there are, mine, which is not yet divorced from its
means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible
whimsey, emanating from a place whose denizens appear to be actuated by a
mere frivolous antagonism to all human order and progress."

"But supposing you, a murderer, to be haunted by the presentment of your
victim?"

"I will imagine that to be my case. Well, it makes no difference. My
interest is with the great human system, in one of whose veins I am a
circulating drop. It is my business to help to keep the system sound,
to do my duty without fear or favour. If disease--say a fouled
conscience--contaminates me, it is for me to throw off the incubus,
not accept it, and transmit the poison. Whatever my lapses of nature, I
owe it to the entire system to work for purity in my allotted sphere, and
not to allow any microbe bugbear to ride me roughshod, to the detriment
of my fellow drops."

I laughed.

"It should be for you," I said, "to learn to shiver, like the boy in the
fairy tale."

"I cannot", he answered, with a peculiar quiet smile; "and yet prisons,
above all places, should be haunted."

* * * * *

Very shortly after his arrival I was called to the cell of the medium,
F----. He suffered, by his own statement, from severe pains in the head.

I found the man to be nervous, anemic; his manner characterized by a sort
of hysterical effrontery.

"Send me to the infirmary", he begged. "This isn't punishment, but
torture."

"What are your symptoms?"

"I see things; my case has no comparison with others. To a man of my
super-sensitiveness close confinement is mere cruelty."

I made a short examination. He was restless under my hands.

"You'll stay where you are", I said.

He broke out into violent abuse, and I left him.

Later in the day I visited him again. He was then white and sullen; but
under his mood I could read real excitement of some sort.

"Now, confess to me, my man", I said, "what do you see?"

He eyed me narrowly, with his lips a little shaky.

"Will you have me moved if I tell you?"

"I can give no promise till I know."

He made up his mind after an interval of silence.

"There's something uncanny in my neighbourhood. Who's confined in the
next cell--there, to the left?"

"To my knowledge it's empty."

He shook his head incre