We walked home very silent afterwards.  It was only when we were in sight of the house that I said, “What do you think of it?” “I can’t tell what to think of it,” he said quickly.  He took—­though he was a very temperate man—­not the claret I was going to offer him, but some brandy from the tray, and swallowed it almost undiluted.  “Mind you, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, when he had lighted his candle; “but I can’t tell what to think,” he turned round to add, when he was half-way upstairs.

All of this, however, did me no good with the solution of my problem.  I was to help this weeping, sobbing thing, which was already to me as distinct a personality as anything I knew; or what should I say to Roland?  It was on my heart that my boy would die if I could not find some way of helping this creature.  You may be surprised that I should speak of it in this way.  I did not know if it was man or woman; but I no more doubted that it was a soul in pain than I doubted my own being; and it was my business to soothe this pain,—­to deliver it, if that was possible.  Was ever such a task given to an anxious father trembling for his only boy?  I felt in my heart, fantastic as it may appear, that I must fulfill this somehow, or part with my child; and you may conceive that rather than do that I was ready to die.  But even my dying would not have advanced me, unless by bringing me into the same world with that seeker at the door.

* * * * *

Next morning Simson was out before breakfast, and came in with evident signs of the damp grass on his boots, and a look of worry and weariness, which did not say much for the night he had passed.  He improved a little after breakfast, and visited his two patients,—­for Bagley was still an invalid.  I went out with him on his way to the train, to hear what he had to say about the boy.  “He is going on very well,” he said; “there are no complications as yet.  But mind you, that’s not a boy to be trifled with, Mortimer.  Not a word to him about last night.”  I had to tell him then of my last interview with Roland, and of the impossible demand he had made upon me, by which, though he tried to laugh, he was much discomposed, as I could see.  “We must just perjure ourselves all round,” he said, “and swear you exorcised it;” but the man was too kind-hearted to be satisfied with that.  “It’s frightfully serious for you, Mortimer.  I can’t laugh as I should like to.  I wish I saw a way out of it, for your sake.  By the way,” he added shortly, “didn’t you notice that juniper-bush on the left-hand side?” “There was one on the right hand of the door.  I noticed you made that mistake last night.”  “Mistake!” he cried, with a curious low laugh, pulling up the collar of his coat as though he felt the cold,—­“there’s no juniper there this morning, left or right.  Just go and see.”  As he stepped into the train a few minutes after, he looked back upon me and beckoned me for a parting word.  “I’m coming back to-night,” he said.