ed Dirk, "it is written large enough:--'The unbelieving wife
is sanctified by the husband . . . how knowest thou, O man, whether thou
shalt save thy wife?' Had the Apostle foreseen my case he could not have
set the matter forth more clearly."

"He, or the Spirit in him, knew all cases, and wrote for every man that
ever shall be born," answered Brant. "This is a lesson to us. Had you
looked sooner you would have learned sooner, and mayhap much trouble
might have been spared. As it is, without doubt you must make haste and
speak to her at once, leaving the rest with God."

"Yes," said Dirk, "as soon as may be, but there is one thing more; ought
I tell her all the truth?"

"I should not be careful to hide it, friend, and now, good night. No,
do not come to the door with me. Who can tell, there may be watchers
without, and it is not wise that we should be seen together so late."

When his cousin and new-found friend had gone Dirk sat for a while, till
the guttering tallow lights overhead burned to the sockets indeed. Then,
taking the candle from the snail-adorned holder, he lit it, and,
having extinguished those in the chandeliers, went into his bedroom and
undressed himself. The Bible he returned to its hiding-place and closed
the panel, after which he blew out the light and climbed into the tall
bed.

As a rule Dirk was a most excellent sleeper; when he laid his head on
the pillow his eyes closed nor did they open again until the appointed
and accustomed hour. But this night he could not sleep. Whether it was
the dinner or the wine, or the gambling, or the prayer and the searching
of the Scriptures with his cousin Brant, the result remained the same;
he was very wakeful, which annoyed him the more as a man of his race and
phlegm found it hard to attribute this unrest to any of these trivial
causes. Still, as vexation would not make him sleep, he lay awake
watching the moonlight flood the chamber in broad bars and thinking.

Somehow as Dirk thought thus he grew afraid; it seemed to him as though
he shared that place with another presence, an evil and malignant
presence. Never in his life before had he troubled over or been troubled
by tales of spirits, yet now he remembered Montalvo's remark about a
ghost, and of a surety he felt as though one were with him there. In
this strange and new alarm he sought for comfort and could think of none
save that which an old and simple pastor had recommended to him in all
hour