upon direct provocation, or when the occasion seemed imperatively to
demand it. He commonly brought it out to match some experience of
another; but he could never deny a friendly appeal when he sat with some
good fellows over their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, and one of
them would say in behalf of a newcomer, "Hewson, tell Wilkins that odd
thing that happened to you up country, in the summer." In complying he
tried to save his self-respect by affecting a contemptuous indifference
in the matter, and beginning reluctantly and pooh-poohingly. He had pangs
afterwards as he walked home to dress for dinner, but his self-reproach
was less afflicting as time passed. His suffering from it was never so
great as from the slight passed upon his apparition, when Wilkins or what
other it might be, would meet the suggestion that he should tell him
about it, with the hurried interposition, "Yes, I have heard that; good
story." This would make Hewson think that he was beginning to tell his
story too often, and that perhaps the friend who suggested his doing so,
was playing upon his forgetfulness. He wondered if he were really
something of a bore with it, and whether men were shying off from him at
the club on account of it. He fancied that might be the reason why the
circle at the five-o'clock cocktails gradually diminished as the winter
passed. He continued to join it till the chance offered of squarely
refusing to tell Wilkins, or whoever, about the odd thing that had
happened to him up country in the summer. Then he felt that he had in a
manner retrieved himself, and could retire from the five-o'clock
cocktails with honor.

That it was a veridical phantom which had appeared to him he did not in
his inmost at all doubt, though in his superficial consciousness he
questioned it, not indeed so disrespectfully as he pooh-poohed it to
others, but still questioned it. This he thought somehow his due as a man
of intelligence who ought not to suffer himself to fall into superstition