“George, do you remember the day that grandmother died, when they all broke down and cried a little at dinner, all except Uncle Marmaduke?  He sat up looking so white and stern at the end of the table.  And I, foolish little child, thought he was not so grieved as the others—­that he did not love his mother so much.  But next day, quite by chance, I heard him, all alone, sobbing over her coffin.  I remember standing outside the door and listening, and each sob went through my heart with a little stab, and I knew for the first time what sorrow was.  But even his sobs were not so pitiful as the moans of that poor spirit.  While I listened I learnt that in another world there may be worse for us to bear than even here—­sorrow more hopeless, more lonely.  For the strange thing was, the moaning seemed to come from so far far away; not only from somewhere millions and millions of miles away, but—­this is the strangest of all—­as if it came to me from time long since past, ages and ages ago.  I know this sounds like nonsense, but indeed I am trying to put into words the weary long distance that seemed to stretch between us, like one I never should be able to cross.  At last it spoke to me in a whisper which I could only just hear; at least it was more like a whisper than anything else I can think of, and it seemed to come like the moaning from far far away.  It thanked me so meekly for looking at it and speaking to it.  It told me that by sins committed against others when it was on earth it had broken the bond between itself and all other creatures.  While it was what we call alive, it did not feel this, for the senses confuse us and hide many things from the good, and so still more from the wicked; but when it died and lost the body by which it seemed to be kept near to other beings, it found itself imprisoned in the most dreadful loneliness—­loneliness which no one in this world can even imagine.  Even the pain of solitary confinement, so it told me, which drives men mad, is only like a shadow or type of this loneliness of spirits.  Others there might be, but it knew nothing of them—­nothing besides this great empty darkness everywhere, except the place it had once lived in, and the people who were moving about it; and even those it could only perceive dimly as if looking through a mist, and always so unutterably away from them all.  I am not giving its own words, you know, George, because I cannot remember them.  I am not certain it did speak to me; the thoughts seemed to pass in some strange way into my mind; I cannot explain how, for the still far-away voice did not really speak.  Sometimes, it told me, the loneliness became agony, and it longed for a word or a sign from some other being, just as Dives longed for the drop of cold water; and at such times it was able to make the living people see it.  But that, alas! was useless, for it only alarmed them so much that the bravest and most benevolent rushed away in terror or would not let it come near them.  But still it went on showing itself to one after another, always hoping that some one would take pity on it and speak to it, for it felt that if comfort ever came to it, it must be through a living soul, and it knew of none save those in this world and in this place.  And I said:  ‘Why did you not turn for help to God?’