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, you know, 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."
"I GOT THE QUEERNESS OF IT FULL."
"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."
"He didn't," said Wish; "he couldn't. Or you'd have gone there too."
"That's precisely it," I said, finding my elusive idea put into words for me.
"That is precisely it," said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon the fire.
For just a little while there was silence.
"And at last he did it?" said Sanderson.
"At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it at last—rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then he got up suddenly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so that he might see. 'I believe,' he said, 'if I could see I should spot what was wrong at once.' And he did. 'I know,' he said. 'What do you know?' said I. 'I know,' he repeated. Then he said, suddenly, 'I can't do it if you look at me—I really can't, it's been that, partly, all along. I'm such a nervous fellow that you put me out.' Well, we had a bit of an argument. Naturally I
