Was it a hallucination?  Was it the fever of the brain?  Was it the disordered fancy caused by great bodily weakness?  How could I tell?  I thought it wisest to accept it as if it were all true.

“This is very touching, Roland,” I said.

“Oh, if you had just heard it, father!  I said to myself, if father heard it he would do something; but mamma, you know, she’s given over to Simson, and that fellow’s a doctor, and never thinks of anything but clapping you into bed.”

“We must not blame Simson for being a doctor, Roland.”

“No, no,” said my boy, with delightful toleration and indulgence; “oh, no; that’s the good of him; that’s what he’s for; I know that.  But you—­you are different; you are just father; and you’ll do something—­directly, papa, directly; this very night.”

“Surely,” I said.  “No doubt it is some little lost child.”

He gave me a sudden, swift look, investigating my face as though to see whether, after all, this was everything my eminence as “father” came to,—­no more than that.  Then he got hold of my shoulder, clutching it with his thin hand.  “Look here,” he said, with a quiver in his voice; “suppose it wasn’t—­living at all!”

“My dear boy, how then could you have heard it?” I said.

He turned away from me with a pettish exclamation,—­“As if you didn’t know better than that!”

“Do you want to tell me it is a ghost?” I said.

Roland withdrew his hand; his countenance assumed an aspect of great dignity and gravity; a slight quiver remained about his lips.  “Whatever it was—­you always said we were not to call names.  It was something—­in trouble.  Oh, father, in terrible trouble!”

“But, my boy,” I said (I was at my wits’ end), “if it was a child that was lost, or any poor human creature—­but, Roland, what do you want me to do?”

“I should know if I was you,” said the child eagerly.  “That is what I always said to myself,—­Father will know.  Oh, papa, papa, to have to face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never to be able to do it any good!  I don’t want to cry; it’s like a baby, I know; but what can I do else?  Out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it!  I can’t bear it!  I can’t bear it!” cried my generous boy.  And in his weakness he burst out, after many attempts to restrain it, into a great childish fit of sobbing and tears.

I do not know that I ever was in a greater perplexity, in my life; and afterwards, when I thought of it, there was something comic in it too.  It is bad enough to find your child’s mind possessed with the conviction that he has seen, or heard, a ghost; but that he should require you to go instantly and help that ghost was the most bewildering experience that had ever come my way.  I am a sober man myself, and not superstitious—­at least any more than everybody is superstitious.  Of course I do not believe in ghosts; but I don’t deny, any