“Well,” answered MacShaughnassy, “if one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks.  But what are you leading up to?”

“Why, to this,” replied Jephson, seating himself straddle-legged across his chair, and leaning his arms upon the back.  “I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor.  The actual facts are few and simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of sixty-two years ago.

“The most important part of the case, however, is the part that is not known, and that never will be known.

“The story begins with a great wrong done by one man unto another man.  What the wrong was I do not know.  I am inclined to think, however, it was connected with a woman.  I think that, because he who had been wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often burn in a man’s brain, unless it be fanned by the memory of a woman’s breath.

“Still that is only conjecture, and the point is immaterial.  The man who had done the wrong fled, and the other man followed him.  It became a point-to-point race, the first man having the advantage of a day’s start.  The course was the whole world, and the stakes were the first man’s life.

“Travellers were few and far between in those days, and this made the trail easy to follow.  The first man, never knowing how far or how near the other was behind him, and hoping now and again that he might have baffled him, would rest for a while.  The second man, knowing always just how far the first one was before him, never paused, and thus each day the man who was spurred by Hate drew nearer to the man who was spurred by Fear.

“At this town the answer to the never-varied question would be:—­

“‘At seven o’clock last evening, M’sieur.’

“’Seven—­ah; eighteen hours.  Give me something to eat, quick, while the horses are being put to.’

“At the next the calculation would be sixteen hours.

“Passing a lonely chalet, Monsieur puts his head out of the window:—­

“’How long since a carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?’

“‘Such a one passed early this morning, M’sieur.’

“’Thanks, drive on, a hundred francs apiece if you are through the pass before daybreak.’

“‘And what for dead horses, M’sieur?’

“‘Twice their value when living.’

“One day the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the open door of a cathedral, and, passing in, knelt down and prayed.  He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith.  He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt his enemy, praying also.