And while I sat there in the twilight-gloom,

Looking at life with my wide-open eyes,

A ghost slipp'd suddenly into the room,

And that ghost was the ghost of Jack Devize!

A shiver ran o'er me from head to foot—

The crisis had come, and fate wrought her worst—

I tried to speak, but my tongue was quite mute,

And I knew that a ghost could not speak first.

O ought I to wake my Harry, or no?

To question the Thing, and let it depart?