just the same character for all that it's been disembodied. That's
a thing we too often forget. People with a certain strength or
fixity of purpose may have ghosts of a certain strength and fixity
of purpose--most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one-idea'd
as monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again and again.
This poor creature wasn't." He suddenly looked up rather queerly, and
his eye went round the room. "I say it," he said, "in all kindliness,
but that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the first glance
he struck me as weak."

He punctuated with the help of his cigar.

"I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His back was towards
me and I saw him first. Right off I knew him for a ghost. He was
transparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmer
of the little window at the end. And not only his physique but
his attitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you know, as though
he didn't know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand
was on the panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth. Like--SO!"

"What sort of physique?" said Sanderson.

"Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck that has two great
flutings down the back, here and here--so! And a little, meanish head
with scrubby hair--And rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower
than the hips; turn-down collar, ready-made short jacket, trousers
baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's how he took me.
I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light,
you know--the candles are on the landing table and there is that lamp--
and I was in my list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. I stopped