, _Credo quia impossible_, since that was the natural failing
of the untrained intellect, and, scientifically speaking, he ought to
have been shot sitting.

'Then he went on to tell a jolly story which some great educationalist
had told him of the little girl playing in the garden, who saw Fifine,
the poodle, unexpectedly appear, and at once rushed in crying to her
mother, "Mummy, mummy, there's a bear in the garden!" Her mother, being
a wholly unimaginative creature, promptly put Maggie into the corner,
and told her to beg God's pardon for having told a lie. Presently Maggie
comes out of her corner radiant, "It's all right, mummy," she cried,
"God tells me He has often mistaken Fifine for a bear Himself." No
doubt, as he said, Maggie had had a momentary fright, and for half a
second had thought of a bear, but she knew, too, that if she stayed to
investigate she would find out it was Fifine, so preferring the luxury
of the marvellous, she fled crying in to her mother. Sometimes, of
course, he added, the ghost is the resultant of some horrible cruelty or
murder, mankind, from various motives, refusing to let the memory of the
crime die out, but more usually the ghost is born of the early
mythopoeic imagination of man that cherishes the marvellous. One never
hears of a new ghost nowadays. Science, no doubt, is an iconoclast in
the matter.'

'Well,' said I, 'how do you propose to proceed? I have gathered that
there was once a warlock or wizard here in the sixteenth century--one
of your forebears--who bore a most unhallowed reputation. Is he your
ghost, or is the ghost the result of his "goings on"?'

'Both,' replied Dick, smiling. 'At least there are a number of tales
about him and his misdeeds; one version has it that he built himself a
secret chamber wherein he conferred with the "Auld Enemy" in person, and
no one has yet discovered his "dug-out." Here's a quaint woodcut of the
old warlock,' he continued, taking down as he spoke a foxed print from
the wall and holding it out for my inspection.

'Ain't he a fearsome figure? Looks as if his liver were cayenne pepper.
Astrologer, botanist, poisoner, he is said to have been, and I don't
wonder.'

The ancient warlock possessed indeed a most mischancy visage: hard,
curious, inhuman eyes he had, thin, sunken cheeks, and a black
straggling moustache, the whole surmounted by a great bald dome of brow.
'By Alchemist out of Misanthropos,' I suggested, after a lengthy
scrutiny