“The face was slowly lifted. The strange lack-lustre eyes looked into mine.
“It was the dead man’s ghost!
“One look was sufficient to convince me, and then I took to my heels and fairly bolted.
“Laugh at me, if you will—call me a coward—but put yourself in my place, and say what you would have done. One doesn’t stop to reason—one doesn’t think of what a ghost can do, and what it can’t. The sight of a man you know to be dead and buried sitting within arm’s-length of you is enough to shock the nervous system of a brave man—and a brave man I am not, and never was.
“I didn’t go that walk again. No power on earth would have tempted me to pass, after the sun had gone down, that haunted seat. That, Mr. Wilkins, is the ghost I saw and spoke to—the ghost of the man who took poison and died in the hospital—the ghost of my fellow-lodger, Charley Ransom.”
“Awful!” said Mr. Wilkins, as Mr. Saxon finished.
I didn’t say anything, but that ghostly blowing on the back of my neck was worse than ever, and I made up my mind that we’d burn a nightlight that night. I couldn’t sleep in the dark with Mr. Saxon’s ghost in my head, I was sure of that.
Harry was the first to speak. “I suppose you did see it, sir?” he said. “But why should Mr. Ransom’s ghost come all the way to Eastbourne after you?”
“Ah!” said Mr. Saxon; “I’ll tell you why. It had been ordered there for change of air.”
“A ghost ordered to Eastbourne for change of air?”