"Why are you afraid of being ill? why do you imagine you are going to be ill? why should you fall ill any more than anybody else?"
I sat silent for a minute, then I said, "Ned, if I tell you, will you promise upon your honour not to laugh at me?"
"I won't, if I can help it. I don't fancy I shall feel inclined to laugh," he replied.
"And unless I give you permission, you will not repeat what I am going to tell you to anyone?"
"That I can safely promise," he said. "Go on."
And I went on. I began at the beginning and recited all the events chronicled in the preceding pages; and he listened, asking no questions, interposing no remark.
When I ceased speaking, he rose and said he must think over the statements I had made.
"I will come and look you up to-night, Patterson," he observed. "Go home to River Hall, and keep yourself quiet. Don't mention that you feel ill. Let matters go on as usual. I will be with you about nine. I have an appointment now that I must keep."
Before nine Munro appeared, hearty, healthy, vigorous as usual.
"If this place were in Russell Square," he said, after a hasty glance round the drawing-room, "I should not mind taking a twenty-one years' lease of it at forty pounds a year, even if ghosts were included in the fixtures."
"I see you place no credence in my story," I said, a little stiffly.
"I place every credence in your story," was the reply. "I believe you believe it, and that is saying more than most people could say nowadays about their friends' stories if they spoke the truth."
It was of no use for me to express any further opinion upon the matter. I felt if I talked for a thousand years I should still fail to convince my listener there was anything supernatural in the appearances beheld at River Hall. It is so easy to pooh-pooh another man's tale; it is pleasant to explain every phenomenon that the speaker has never witnessed; it is so hard to credit that anything absolutely unaccountable on natural grounds has been witnessed by your dearest friend, that, knowing my only chance of keeping my temper and preventing Munro gaining a victory over me was to maintain a discreet silence, I let him talk on and strive to account for the appearances I had witnessed in his own way.
