The idea that that strong, well-grown man should have any difficulty in finding something to do surprised me.  If he chose to go out and labor with his hands—­and surely no man who was willing to wander about selling tickets should object to that—­there would be no difficulty in his obtaining a livelihood in our town.

“If you want regular employment,” I said, “I think you can easily find it.”

“I want it,” he answered, his face clouded by a troubled expression, “but I cannot take it.”

“Cannot take it!” I exclaimed.

“No,” he said, “I am not my own master.  I am as much a slave as any negro hereabouts!”

I was rather surprised at this meaningless allusion, but contented myself with asking him what he meant by not being his own master.

He looked on the floor and then he looked at me, with a steady, earnest gaze.  “I should like well to tell you my story,” he said.  “I have been ordered not to tell it, but I have resolved that when I should meet a man to whom I should be moved to speak I would speak.”

Now, I felt a very natural emotion of pride.  My perception of objects of interest was a quick and a correct one.  “Speak on,” I said, “I shall be very glad to hear what you have to say.”

He looked toward the open door.  I arose and closed it.  When I had resumed my seat he drew his chair closer to me, leaned toward me, and said: 

“In the first place you should know that I am a materialized spirit.”

I sat up, hard pressed against the back of my chair.

“Nay, start not,” he said, “I am now as truly flesh and blood as you are; but a short three weeks ago I was a spirit in the realms of endless space.  I know,” he continued, “that my history is a sore thing to inflict upon any man, and there are few to whom I would have broached it, but I will make it brief.  Three weeks ago these spiritualists held privately in this town what they call a seance, and at that time I was impelled, by a power I understood not, to appear among them.  After I had come it was supposed that a mistake had been made, and that I was not the spirit wanted.  In the temporary confusion occasioned by this supposition, and while the attention of the exhibitors was otherwise occupied, I was left exposed to the influence of the materializing agencies for a much longer time than had been intended; so long, indeed, that instead of remaining in the misty, indistinct form in which spirits are presented by these men to their patrons, I became as thoroughly embodied, as full of physical life and energy, and as complete a mortal man as I was when I disappeared from this earth, one hundred and two years ago.”

“One hundred and two years!” I mechanically ejaculated.  There was upon me the impulse to get up and go where I could breathe the outer air; to find my wife and talk to her about marketing or some household affair, to get away from this being—­human or whatever he was—­but this was impossible.  That interest which dawned upon me when I first perceived my visitor now held me as if it had been a spell.