cho of ourselves, lingering about the scenes we have frequented on
this earth, which under certain very rare conditions--the state of the
atmosphere among others--may be perceptible to those still 'clothed
upon' with this present body? To attempt a simile, I might suggest the
perfume that lingers when the flowers are thrown away, the smoke that
gradually dissolves after the lamp is extinguished! This is very, very
loosely and roughly the _sort_ of thing I mean by my 'will-o'-the-wisps.'"

"I don't like it at all," said Margaret, though she smiled a little. "I
think I should be more frightened if I saw that kind of ghost--I mean if
I thought it that kind--than by a good, honest, old-fashioned one, who
knew what it was about and meant to come."

"But you have just said," he objected, "that they never do seem to know
what they are about. Besides, why should you be frightened?--our fears,
ourselves in fact--are the only thing we really need be frightened
of--our weaknesses and ignorances and folly. There was great truth in
that rather ghastly story of Calderra's, allegory though it is, about
the man whose evil genius was himself; have you read it?"

We all shook our heads.

"It is ignorance that frightens us," he went on. "In this instance think
of the appearances we are speaking of as almost of the nature of a
photograph, or the reflection in a looking-glass. I daresay we should
have been terrified by these, had we not grown used to them, did we not
know what they are. Somebody said lately what appalling things we should
think our own _shadows_, if we had suddenly for the first time become
aware of them."

"I don't mind so much," said Margaret, "when you speak of ghosts as a
sort of photograph. But----" she hesitated.

"Pray say what you are thinking."

"Just now when you said how incredible it was that _real souls_ should
return to this earth, you only spoke of good people, did you not?"

In his turn Sir Robert hesitated.

"It is difficult to draw a line even in thought between good and bad
people," he said, "and, thank God, it is not for us to do so. 'To my
Maker alone I stand or I fall.' There is evil in the best; there is, I
would fain hope," but here his face grew grave and sad, "good in the
worst. But even allowing that we could draw the line, is it likely that
the bad, even those who have all but lost the last spark, who don't want
to be good, is it likely that they, if, as we must believe, under Divine
co