But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour that he was standing somewhere near me.
You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once that strange uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen standing beside you, in a darkened room, let us say, with a dying fire, when the night has grown late, and the October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts for a moment clear upon our dreaming sense.
You have had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind telling me about it. Stop. I don’t want to hear about that strange presentiment you had the night your Aunt Eliza broke her leg. Don’t let’s bother with your experience. I want to tell mine.
“You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend,” repeated Father Time, “quite wrong.”
“Young friend?” I said, my mind, as one’s mind is apt to in such a case, running to an unimportant detail. “Why do you call me young?”
“Your pardon,” he answered gently—he had a gentle way with him, had Father Time. “The fault is in my failing eyes. I took you at first sight for something under a hundred.”
“Under a hundred?” I expostulated. “Well, I should think so!”
“Your pardon again,” said Time, “the fault is in my failing memory. I forgot. You seldom pass that nowadays, do you? Your life is very short of late.”
I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient and dim he seemed as he stood beside me. But I did not turn to look upon him. I had no need to. I knew his form, in the inner and clearer sight of things, as well as every human being knows by innate instinct, the Unseen face and form of Father Time.
I could hear him murmuring beside me, “Short—short, your life is short”; till the sound of it seemed to mingle with the measured ticking of a clock somewhere in the silent house.