“All right.  We shall try to lay that poor ghost,” said Renouard gloomily, going off to a small hut near by to dress.  He was saying to himself:  “This fellow will end by giving me away.  The last thing that I . . .  No!  That mustn’t be.”  And feeling his hand being forced he discovered the whole extent of his cowardice.

CHAPTER X

That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants.  The crop promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment.  His investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by, for experiments.

After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of cultivation and such matters.  Then suddenly: 

“By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation boys have been disturbed by a ghost?”

Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a stiff smile.

“My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence.  They funk working in a certain field on the slope of the hill.”

“A ghost here!” exclaimed the amused professor.  “Then our whole conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised.  This island has been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages.  How did a ghost come here.  By air or water?  And why did it leave its native haunts.  Was it from misanthropy?  Was he expelled from some community of spirits?”

Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone.  The words died on his lips.  Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired.

“I don’t know.”  Renouard made an effort to appear at ease.  He had, he said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys—­a ghost-ridden race.  They had started the scare.  They had probably brought their ghost with them.

“Let us investigate the matter, Renouard,” proposed the professor half in earnest.  “We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of primitive minds, at any rate.”

This was too much.  Renouard jumped up and leaving the room went out and walked about in front of the house.  He would allow no one to force his hand.  Presently the professor joined him outside.  He carried his parasol, but had neither his book nor his pipe with him.  Amiably serious he laid his hand on his “dear young friend’s” arm.

“We are all of us a little strung up,” he said.  “For my part I have been like sister Anne in the story.  But I cannot see anything coming.  Anything that would be the least good for anybody—­I mean.”

Renouard had recovered sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this waste of time.  For that was what, he supposed, the professor had in his mind.