moment he had room for one emotion only. It did not seem to him odd that
this stranger should have such intimate knowledge of his mind.

"It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their
photographs upon surrounding scenes and objects," the other added, "and
who ever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and
lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon? It is unfortunate.
But the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough to
leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too lukewarm."

The stranger sighed as he spoke. But Harris, exhausted and shaken as he
was to the very core, paced by his side, only half listening. He moved
as in a dream still. It was very wonderful to him, this walk home under
the stars in the early hours of the October morning, the peaceful forest
all about them, mist rising here and there over the small clearings, and
the sound of water from a hundred little invisible streams filling in
the pauses of the talk. In after life he always looked back to it as
something magical and impossible, something that had seemed too
beautiful, too curiously beautiful, to have been quite true. And, though
at the time he heard and understood but a quarter of what the stranger
said, it came back to him afterwards, staying with him till the end of
his days, and always with a curious, haunting sense of unreality, as
though he had enjoyed a wonderful dream of which he could recall only
faint and exquisite portions.

But the horror of the earlier experience was effectually dispelled; and
when they reached the railway inn, somewhere about three o'clock in the
morning, Harris shook the stranger's hand gratefully, effusively,
meeting the look of those rather wonderful eyes with a full heart, and
went up to his room, thinking in a hazy, dream-like way of the words