the English channel, relating in a sepulchral
whisper the comic situations of his humorous hero
so that I might take up the thread of his story.

"From the window beside which I write this I
can see down in the valley Ravensbrook House,
where Crane used to live and where Harold Frederic,
he and I spent many a merry night together. When
the Romans occupied Britain, some of their legions,
parched with thirst, were wandering about these dry
hills with the chance of finding water or perishing.
They watched the ravens, and so came to the stream
which rises under my place and flows past Stephen's
former home; hence the name, Ravensbrook.

"It seems a strange coincidence that the greatest
modern writer on war should set himself down
where the greatest ancient warrior, Caesar, probably
stopped to quench his thirst.

"Stephen died at three in the morning, the same
sinister hour which carried away our friend Frederic
nineteen months before. At midnight, in Crane's
fourteenth-century house in Sussex, we two tried
to lure back the ghost of Frederic into that house of
ghosts, and to our company, thinking that if reappearing
were ever possible so strenuous a man as
Harold would somehow shoulder his way past the
guards, but he made no sign. I wonder if the less
insistent Stephen will suggest some ingenious method