Related by Captain Chester.
In my travels I have met many very extraordinary and remarkable people with hobbies and fads of various kinds, but I never met a man of such curious personality as this old friend of mine, Captain Chester. All his methods and ideas were purely original. Everyone has some hobby; his hobby was ghost and spook-hunting.
We were sitting one lovely September evening in the gardens of one of the hotels at Bonn, which stretched down to the river Rhine, listening to the band and watching the great rafts coming down the river from the Black Forest.
"By Jove, sir," said the old man, "I have shot big game in the Rockies, and hunted tigers and all that sort of thing; but, zooks! sir, I prefer hunting ghosts any day. That Robert de Montrose was the first I saw. There are shoals of these shades about, a perfect army of them everywhere, especially in St Andrews. Gad, sir, you should hear the banshees shrieking at night in the Irish bogs. I don't believe in your infernal sea serpents, but I've seen water kelpies in the Scottish and American lakes."
I told him I had never heard a banshee or seen a water kelpie.
"Very likely, sir, very probable. Everyone can't see and hear these things. I can,"
I told him I had never seen a disembodied spirit, and didn't want to.
"Gad, zooks! sir, I consider disinspirited bodies far worse. They are quite common. I allude to human bodies that have lost their spirits or souls, and yet go about among us. Zounds! sir, my cousin is one of them."
"Ah," he continued, "detached personality is a curious
