"What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact that

he did seem within limits to have found himself out. The mess he had

made of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told

it would be a 'lark'; he had come expecting it to be a 'lark,'

and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record!

He proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He said, and

I can quite believe it, that he had never tried to do anything all

his life that he hadn't made a perfect mess of--and through all

the wastes of eternity he never would. If he had had sympathy,

perhaps--. He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarked that,

strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, had given

him the amount of sympathy I was doing now. I could see what he wanted

straight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may be a

brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient of the

confidences of one of these egotistical weaklings, ghost or body, is

beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. 'Don't you brood on

these things too much,' I said. 'The thing you've got to do is to get

out of this get out of this--sharp. You pull yourself together and

TRY.' 'I can't,' he said. 'You try,' I said, and try he did."



"Try!" said Sanderson. "HOW?"



"Passes," said Clayton.



"Passes?"



"Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That's

how he had come in and that's how he had to get out again. Lord!

what a business I had!"



"But how could ANY series of passes--?" I began.



"My dear man," said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great

emphasis on certain words, "you want EVERYTHING clear. _I_ don't

know HOW. All I know is that 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.



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