you do—that he did, anyhow, at least. After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared.'
'Did you,' said Sanderson, slowly, ''observe the passes?'
'Yes,' said Clayton, and seemed to think. 'It was tremendously queer,' he said. 'There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night town. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all—sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. "I can't," he said; "I shall never!" And suddenly he sat down on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob. Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!
'"You pull yourself together," I said, and tried to pat him on the back, and . . . my confounded hand went through him! By that time, you know, I wasn't nearly so—massive as I had been on the landing. I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the dressing-table. "You pull yourself together," I said to him, "and try." And in order to encourage and help him I began to try as well.'
'What!' said Sanderson, 'the passes?'
'Yes, the passes.'
'But' I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space.
'This is interesting,' said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl. You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away'
'Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier? Yes.'
