"But don't you think the fact of Davenport's name having been brought before the public so lately, and that you recollected the documents you held belonging to Fahey, and that you looked over the cliff at the very spot where he lost his life, may all have helped to impose upon your imagination?"
"Sir, an attorney of my years does not know the meaning of the word imagination. You may say I am mad if you like, but don't attribute imagination to me, or I shall break down altogether. O'Brien, do you mean to say seriously that you take me for a crazy young poet? Great heavens, sir, it can't have come to that with me in my declining years!"
"But, then, what did you see?"
"A ghost--Fahey's ghost."
"You don't mean to tell me seriously you believe in ghosts!"
"I mean to tell you most emphatically I do not."
"Then what is your contention?"
"That I, being one who does not believe in ghosts, saw the ghost of Michael Fahey this day week at the Black Rock."
"I can make nothing of your position."
"I can make nothing of my position either. I am beginning to think I shall lose my reason. You are the first person I spoke to on the subject. Don't say anything about it to a soul. I have no wife to blab to, and I look on you as a friend. I had hoped you would have brought me news from London--some facts not published in the papers, and bearing on this branch of the case. But you haven't. If you let this get abroad, some of my kind friends will get me locked up. I got old Coolahan locked up because he kept on saying that farthings were as valuable as sovereigns because they had the Queen's head on them."