ning there was no trace of any creature.
"And since then he follows me. I saw that haggard, wretched face of
his last night when I sat here at the table; and I see him watching me
if I look among a crowd of people, and, if I look back along a street,
he is always coming towards me; but, when he gets near, he vanishes,
and sometimes at the theatre he will be among the actors all the
evening. Nobody sees him but me, but every month I see him oftener,
and his face grows out of the darkness at night; and sometimes, when I
talk with any one, the face will fade out, and Dunster's comes in its
place. It is killing me, Ainslie. I have fought against it; I have
wandered half over the world trying to get rid of it, but it is no
use. For a few days in a strange place, sometimes for weeks, I did not
see him at first; but I know he is always watching me now, and I see
him every day."
I can give you no idea how thrilling it was to listen to this unhappy
man, who seemed so pitifully cowed and broken, so helpless and
hopeless. Whether there had been any thing supernatural, or whether it
was merely the workings of a diseased brain, it was horribly real to
him; and his life had been spoiled.
"Whiston, my dear fellow," said my brother, "I'm not going to believe
in ghosts if I can possibly help it. Could you be perfectly sure that
you did not see Dunster himself at first? You know he was counted
among the missing only, there is no positive proof that he died,
though I admit there was only a chance he was not killed outright. We
never saw him buried," said Jack, with unsympathetic persistence. "I'm
sorry for you; but you mustn't give way to this thing. You have
thought about it until you can't forget it at all. Such cases are not
uncommon: it's simply a hallucination. I'll give you proofs enough
tomorrow. Have some more claret, won't you?" Jack spoke eagerly, with
the kindest tone; and his guest could not help responding by a faint,
dreary little smile. "Do you like music as much as ever? Suppose we go
over into the parlor, and my sister will play for us; won't you,
Helen?" which was asking a great deal of me just then.
And we apparently forgot all about Mr. Dunster for the rest of the
evening. And, when Jack asked Mr. Whiston if he remembered a song he
used to sing in college, to my delight he went at once to the piano,
and sang it with a very pleasant tenor voice; and when he ended, and
my brother applauded, he struck some new cho
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