“What?” she said, “Have you been in long?”
“Look at the clock,” said Caleb. “Half after twelve.”
“My gracious,” said his wife. “Let’s be off to bed.”
“Did you tell her about the spook?” he was naturally asked.
“Not I,” said Caleb. “You know what she’d say. Same as she always does of a Saturday night.”
*******
This fable Mr. Batchel related with reluctance. His attitude towards it was wholly deprecatory. Psychic phenomena, he said, lay outside the province of the mere humourist, and the levity with which they had been treated was largely responsible for the presumptuous materialism of the age.
He said more, as he warmed to the subject, than can here be repeated. The reader of the foregoing tales, however, will be interested to know that Mr. Batchel’s own attitude was one of humble curiosity. He refused even to guess why the revenant was sometimes invisible, and at other times partly or wholly visible; sometimes capable of using physical force, and at other times powerless. He knew that they had their periods, and that was all.