"Put that pipe away," said Potts, coming out of his reverie, "pipes mean
matches; no matches here."

I obeyed, and he went on thinking till at last what between the chest
and the worm-eaten Jacobean bed and old Potts on the prayer-stool, I
began to feel as if I were being mesmerized. At length he rose and said
in the same hollow voice:

"Young man, you may have that chest, and the price is £50. Now for
heaven's sake don't offer me £40, or it will be £100 before you leave
this room."

"With the contents?" I said casually.

"Yes, with the contents. It's the contents I'm told you are to have."

"Look here, Potts," I said, exasperated, "what the devil do you mean?
There's no one in this room except you and me, so who can have told you
anything unless it was old Tom downstairs."

"Tom," he said with unutterable sarcasm, "Tom! Perhaps you mean the
mawkin that was put up to scare birds from the peas in the garden, for
it has more in its head than Tom. No one here? Oh! what fools some men
are. Why, the place is thick with them."

"Thick with whom?"

"Who? why, ghosts, of course, as you would call them in your ignorance.
Spirits of the dead I name them. Beautiful enough, too, some of them.
Look at that one there," and he lifted the lantern and pointed to a pile