to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared to buffet back the buffeting gale.  Then it glided on by his side, looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips with agonized rapidity, as if it said, “Look at me—­speak to me—­speak to me—­see me!” But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed frown on his forehead betokening an irritated mind.  The light that had shone in the figure of the phantom darkened slowly, till the form was only a pale shadow.  The wind had suddenly lulled, and no longer lifted its white hair.  It still glided on with him, its head drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn features, as if it had shrieked out a word.  He had his foot on the step at the moment.  With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead, while the vexed look went out quickly on his face.  The ghost watched him breathlessly.  But the irritated expression came back to his countenance more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a latch-key, muttering petulantly, “What the devil is the matter with me now?” It seemed to him that a voice had cried clearly, yet as from afar, “Charles Renton!”—­his own name.  He had heard it in his startled mind; but then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis, could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.

He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his overcoat; wrenched off his outer ’kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw himself into an easy-chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk, with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.  The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white locks drooping down!

It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor.  The very library caught contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre.  The furniture was grim and sullen and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire on its polished surfaces in homoeopathic globules, and got no good from them.  The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton,—­under price, mind you,—­when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars