veteran now, was still one of the best game shots in the West of
England.

Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir
Walter himself summed up.

"If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the
dead," he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these
spirits, to call them from the next world back to ours, and to
consult people who profess to be able to do so--extremely
doubtful characters, as a rule--that I think is much to be
condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums of
communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should
always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a
charlatan. But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been
recognized by the living, who shall deny?

"My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience.
He actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and
his greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine,
appeared to him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance
could not say that he heard words uttered, but he certainly
recognized his dead friend as he stood by his bedside, and he
received into his mind a clear warning before the vision disappeared.
Is that so, Tom?"

"Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the
man in New York--told four others about it, and three took his
tip and didn't sail. The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He
came out all right."