the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway
track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place he found
this door ajar, and neither in his own room, nor in the baggage room,
nor in the coffin, was there sign of human presence, living or dead.

All the world about lay in the clear white twilight. The blueberry
flats, the bramble-holts, were red. The clouded sky was white, except
for that metallic blue tinge in the west, through which, in some thin
places, a pale glow of yellower light was now visible, the last rays of
the day that had set. It was this world on which the young Englishman
looked as, amazed and somewhat affrighted, he walked round the building,
searching on all sides for the creature that could hardly yet, had it
run away in such a level land, be wholly out of sight.

He went indoors again to make sure that nothing was there, and this time
he made a discovery--his tea was gone from his cup. He gave a shudder of
disgust, and, leaving his food untouched, put on coat and cap, and went
out shutting his door behind him. His spirits sank. It seemed to him
that, had it been midnight instead of this blank, even daylight, had his
unearthly-looking visitant acted in more unearthly fashion, the
circumstances would have had less weird force to impress his mind.

We can, after all, only form conjectures regarding inexplicable
incidents from the successive impressions that have been made upon us.
This man was not at all given to love of romance or superstition, yet
the easy explanation that some man, for purpose of trick or crime, had
hidden in the box, did not seem to him to fit the circumstances. He
could not make himself believe that the eyes he had seen belonged to a
living man; on the other hand, he found it impossible to conceive of a
tea-drinking ghost.