"As to what?"
"The supernatural."
There was no answer during a considerable interval. Presently it came, with deliberate insistence:—
"It is a principle with me to oppose bullying. We are here for a definite purpose—his duty plain to any man who wills to read it. There may be disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no longer control. If there are, mine, which is not yet divorced from its means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible whimsey, emanating from a place whose denizens appear to be actuated by a mere frivolous antagonism to all human order and progress."
"But supposing you, a murderer, to be haunted by the presentment of your victim?"
"I will imagine that to be my case. Well, it makes no difference. My interest is with the great human system, in one of whose veins I am a circulating drop. It is my business to help to keep the system sound, to do my duty without fear or favour. If disease—say a fouled conscience—contaminates me, it is for me to throw off the incubus, not accept it, and transmit the poison. Whatever my lapses of nature, I owe it to the entire system to work for purity in my allotted sphere, and not to allow any microbe bugbear to ride me roughshod, to the detriment of my fellow drops."
I laughed.
"It should be for you," I said, "to learn to shiver, like the boy in the fairy tale."
"I cannot", he answered, with a peculiar quiet smile; "and yet prisons, above all places, should be haunted."
* * * * *