An undersized man shuffled into the foyer. His legs wavered, and one shoulder was higher than the other.
"'E is tail'. 'E maka da clo'," said Beatrice, proudly. "We 'ave r-roon off, toget'er. My father, 'e is so good; 'e' ava pardon. We live all toget'er. My father lof-a da bambino. You will see da play? Giovanni, show de signore da good seat. No, no! No taka da ten centa."
FINIS
THE SPECTRE IN THE CART
By Thomas Nelson Page
I had not seen my friend Stokeman since we were at college together, longer ago than it was pleasant to think of, and now naturally we fell to talking of old times. I remembered him as a hard-headed man without a particle of superstition, if such a thing be possible in a land where we are brought up on superstition, from the bottle. He was at that time full of life and of enjoyment of whatever it brought. I found now that gravity had taken the place of the gayety for which he was then noted, and that his wild and almost reckless spirits had been tempered by the years which had passed as I should not have believed possible; for his career had been an unbroken success, and he appeared to have proved in his own case his old tenet, so arrogantly asserted, that no difficulty could exist which a man's intellect could not overcome.
He used to maintain, I remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on purely natural grounds. And he was wont to say that he regretted that he had not followed my profession: Medicine instead of the Law, that he might study and explain all such phenomena, and show the folly of all contrary theories.
During our stay at college a somewhat notable instance of what was by many supposed to be a supernatural manifestation occurred in a deserted house on a remote plantation in an adjoining county.