“Perhaps you’d like it cold, by way of change?” continued the Haunted Man, correcting himself, as he remembered the peculiar temperature with which the Goblin was probably familiar.
“Time flies,” said the Goblin coldly. “We have no leisure for idle talk. Come!” He moved his ghostly truncheon towards the window, and laid his hand upon the other’s arm. At his touch the body of the Haunted Man seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window into the black and blowy night.
In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted Man seemed to leave him. At length they stopped suddenly.
“What do you see?” asked the Goblin.
“I see a battlemented medieval castle. Gallant men in mail ride over the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntletted fingers to fair ladies, who wave their lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tournament. I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and shamelessly proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to leap from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a good deal of blood. I’ve seen pretty much the same at Astley’s.”
“Look again.”
“I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, barelegged men, priggish bookworms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always blood—and the superiority of physical attainments.”
“And how do you feel now?” said the Goblin.
The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders.
“None the better for being carried back and asked to sympathise with a barbarous age.”