The dreams of imaginative boyhood all had

faded; perhaps he had merely put them away, or perhaps he had forgotten

them. At any rate, he never spoke of such things now, and when his

Irish wife mentioned her belief that the old country house possessed a

family ghost, even declaring that she had met an Eighteenth Century

figure of a man in the corridors, “an old, old man who bends down upon

a stick” —Tim only laughed and said: “That’s as it ought to be! And

if these awful land-taxes force us to sell some day, a respectable

ghost will increase the market value.”

But one night he woke and heard a tapping on the floor. He sat up

in bed and listened. There.was a chilly feeling down his back. Belief

had long since gone out of him; he felt uncannily afraid. The sound

came nearer and nearer; there were light footsteps with it. The door

opened—it opened a little wider, that is, for it already stood

ajar—and there upon the threshold stood a figure that it seemed he

knew. He saw the face as with all the vivid sharpness of reality. There

was a smile upon it, but a smile of warning and alarm. The arm was

raised. Tim saw the slender hand, lace falling down upon the long,

thin fingers, and in them, tightly gripped, a polished cane.

Shaking the cane twice to and fro in the air, the face thrust

forward, spoke certain words, and— vanished. But the words were

inaudible; for, though the lips distinctly moved, no sound,

apparently, came from them.

And Tim sprang out of bed. The room was full of darkness. He turned

the light on. The door, he saw, was shut as usual. He had, of course,

been dreaming. But he noticed a curious odour in the air. He sniffed

it once or twice—then grasped the truth. It was a smell of burning!

Fortunately, he awoke just in time… .

He was acclaimed a hero for his promptitude. After many days, when

the damage was repaired, and nerves had settled down once more into

the calm routine of country life, he told the story to his wife—the

entire story. He told the adventure of his imaginative boyhood with it.

She asked to see the old family cane. And it was this request of hers

that brought back to memory a detail Tim had entirely forgotten all

these years. He remembered it suddenly again—the loss of the cane,

the hubbub his father kicked up about it, the endless, futile search.

For the stick had never been found, and Tim, who was questioned very

closely concerning it, swore with all his might that he had not the

smallest notion where it was. Which was, of course, the truth.

.