Then he stops, looks back, narrows his foxy lids, listens--quite
perceptibly, you know, a kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to
open this corner bookcase here, as if it were a door and goes out
along what I suppose might at some time have been an outside
gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy, the house extended
once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quite deliberately,
treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels, until, however
far you lean out of the window, you can't follow him any further.
And then--and this is the bit that takes one's fancy--when you
have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been
doing when the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat,
with bolting eyes awaiting developments, just according to your
school of thought, or of nerves, the creature comes back--comes
back; and with what looks uncommonly like a lighted candle in his
hand. That really is a thrill, I assure you.'

'But you've seen this--you've really seen this yourself?'

'Oh yes, twice,' replied Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister,
quite by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was
shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him
shamble out of the window here, and go shuffling along, mid-air,
across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high
corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of
frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes' concentrated
watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back again--
the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a
candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.'

'And then?'