stopped. Annie here alone without a penny--starving; and I on the other
side of the earth, ditto. You see?

"I thought of shaving twice a day. But could I shave my head, too?
No way--no way at all. Unless I dropped Johns overboard; and even
then------

"Do you wonder now that with all these things boiling in my head I didn't
know where I was putting down my foot that night? I just felt myself
falling--then crash, and all dark.

"When I came to myself that bang on the head seemed to have steadied my
wits somehow. I was so sick of everything that for two days I wouldn't
speak to anyone. They thought it was a slight concussion of the brain.
Then the idea dawned upon me as I was looking at that ghost-ridden,
wretched fool. 'Ah, you love ghosts,' I thought. 'Well, you shall have
something from beyond the grave.'

"I didn't even trouble to invent a story. I couldn't imagine a ghost
if I wanted to. I wasn't fit to lie connectedly if I had tried. I just
bulled him on to it. Do you know, he got, quite by himself, a notion
that at some time or other I had done somebody to death in some way, and
that------"

"Oh, the horrible man!" cried Mrs. Bunter from the sofa. There was a
silence.

"And didn't he bore my head off on the home passage!" began Bunter again
in a weary voice. "He loved me. He was proud of me. I was converted. I
had had a manifestation. Do you know what he was after? He wanted me and