Oh! to get away, and leave that malignant unseen watcher in undisputed possession of his dismal abode! I was quite certain of the gender! Then a chance of deliverance flashed over me. I could return after dinner to St. Andrews with the friends who had brought me. But I had accepted the invitation to stay the night. What possible excuse could I make for cutting short my visit? In this case the truth was no use; in fact, worse than useless. Not only would my host and hostess utterly fail to understand what I was talking about, but they would be exceedingly indignant, and look upon me as absolutely insane.
As falsehood had to be resorted to, I surely could invent some plausible excuse that would hurt no one's feelings, but the only excuse I could think of was illness. I must tell my hostess that I feared I was "in for" an illness of some sort, and the wisest thing to do was to drive back to St. Andrews and be laid up in my own bed. The most hospitable person would rather not have a sick guest under her roof. The excuse I proposed to make seemed to me to be the one most likely to be accepted without much fuss.
I did not determine upon this plan without a certain amount of wavering. "After all," I told myself, "it is only for one night, and what can this entity do but give you a very creepy and disturbed night. You will have to sit up against the wall, and defend yourself by the power of the Cross, bidding it begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This you may have to do many times, but the night won't last forever, and you had best try to make the best of things, and not risk offending old friends."
It did seem hard that I dared not tell the truth. Had the entity been in the flesh how easy it would have been. Who has not, at some time or another in her life, found herself unwittingly to be an unwelcome guest, and made to feel "if you don't go away at once you will regret it"? Sometimes one comes across persons who for some private reason dread being overlooked, or who love their hermitage so dearly that they refuse to be amiable, to even the most swiftly passing guest. Old people are often like that, every one knows, or has known, of such people in the flesh. Yet how few believe that such unpleasant traits persist just as strongly after so-called death, as before. What should suddenly change a man's whole disposition the moment he "shuffles off this mortal coil"?