bed rather
early. I slept well enough during the earlier part of the night, but
awoke about two A.M., having had a tiresome, worrying dream about the
very man I have mentioned, who had certainly not been in my thoughts for
many months, or possibly years.

Even when fully awake, his influence was still in the room with me, and
falling asleep again, there he was once more in my dream, twitting me
with my want of appreciation of him in the past, and suggesting what a
much more successful career I might have had through marrying him. This
sort of thing went on for the rest of the night. Either I woke up with a
disagreeable start, still feeling the man's influence in the room, or
sank into a troubled sleep, to be once more at the mercy of his
reproaches!

When morning came I was only too thankful to get up, and when my friend
arrived on her bicycle about noon, and asked me how I had slept in the
strange house, I was forced to confess that my night had been much
troubled by dreams about an old friend, of whom she had never heard,
by-the-by.

"Oh, well, we all dream about old friends sometimes," she said, "but I'm
afraid in this case your dreams were not pleasant; you look tired out!
Anyway, it is a mercy that it was not F----'s!"

And so with a joke the matter dropped.

But the following night the trouble was renewed. Even then I did not in
any way connect it with the room in which I was sleeping, and I said
nothing next day to my friend on the subject.

But the _third_ night matters had gone beyond a joke. The influence was
stronger than ever, the gibes and reproaches more accentuated, and, in
addition to these, there was on my side the exasperation engendered by
three sleepless nights.

Instead of feeling depressed--as on the two previous occasions--the
"worm turned" at last!

I spoke out loud in my vexation, as though the man himself were there
listening to me.

"Well," I said, "I have no unkindly feeling towards _you_ of any kind.
If you have nothing better to do than to come worrying me and keeping me
awake in this way, it just shows how wise I was _not_ to marry you! You
have nothing to do with my life now. And YOU CAN GO."

"Standing up" in this way to the ghost of the living had a most
excellent effect, upon my mind at anyrate. I felt intensely relieved,
and soon fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

This last experience first suggested the idea that this old friend _must
have some special connection w