"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.
"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things—the idiots!"
"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"
"That it was another man."
The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.
"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in the world. Odd, isn't it?"
"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.
"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by competent witnesses—what does it come to?"
Hugh paused.
"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he? Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a shadow?"