accepted, for it was very late, and Madame Wachner, in spite of her
Fritz's losses, had insisted on taking a carriage home.

And then, though he had begun by going to sleep, Chester had waked at the
end of an hour to feel himself encompassed, environed, oppressed by the
_perception_--it was far more than a sensation--that he was no longer
alone.

He sat up in bed and struck a match, at once longing and fearing to see
a form,--the semblance of a human being--rise out of the darkness.

But all he saw, when he had lighted the candle which stood on the table
by his bed, was the barely furnished room which, even in this poor and
wavering light, had so cheerful and commonplace an appearance.

Owing no doubt to his excellent physical condition, as well as to his
good conscience, Chester was a fearless man. A week ago he would have
laughed to scorn the notion that the dead ever revisit the earth, as so
many of us believe they do, but the four nights he had spent at the
Pension Malfait, had shaken his conviction that "dead men rise up never."

Most reluctantly he had come to the conclusion that the Pension Malfait
was haunted.

And the feeling of unease did not vanish even after he had taken his bath
in the queer bath-room, of which the Malfaits were so proud, or later,
when he had eaten the excellent breakfast provided for him. On the
contrary, the thought of going up to his bed-room, even in broad
daylight, filled him with a kind of shrinking fear.