Lennox was bound to confess that he entertained no personal fear.  They still argued, and the clock struck midnight.  Then the sailor made a suggestion.

“Since you’re so infernally obstinate, I’ll do this.  We’ll toss up, and the winner can have the fun.  That’s fair to both.”

The other agreed; he tossed a coin, and May called “tails,” and won.

He was jubilant, while Henry showed a measure of annoyance.  The other consoled him.

“It’s better so, old man.  You’re highly strung and nervy, and a poet and all that sort of thing.  I’m no better than a prize ox, and don’t know what nerves mean.  I can sleep anywhere, anyhow.  If you can sleep in a submarine, you bet you can in a nice, airy Elizabethan room, even if it is haunted.  But it’s not; that’s the whole point.  There’s not a haunted room in the world.  Get me your service revolver, like a good chap.”

Henry was silent, and Tom rose to make ready for his vigil.

“I’m dog-tired, anyhow,” he said.  “Nothing less than Queen Elizabeth herself will keep me awake, if it does appear.”

Then the other surprised him.

“Don’t think I want to go back on it.  You’ve won the right to make the experiment—­if we ignore Uncle Walter.  But—­well, you’ll laugh, yet, on my honor, Tom, I’ve got a feeling I’d rather you didn’t.  It isn’t nerves.  I’m not nervy any more than you are.  I’m not suggesting that I go now, of course.  But I do ask you to think better of it and chuck the thing.”

“Why?”

“Well, one can’t help one’s feelings.  I do feel a rum sort of conviction at the bottom of my mind that it’s not good enough.  I can’t explain; there are no words for it that I know, but it’s growing on me.  Intuition, perhaps.”

“Intuition of what?”

“I can’t tell you.  But I ask you not to go.”

“You were going if you’d won the toss?”

“I know.”

“Then your growing intuition is only because I won it.  Hanged if I don’t think you want to funk me, old man!”

“I couldn’t do that.  But it’s different me going and you going.  I’ve got nothing to live for.  Don’t think I’m maudlin, or any rot of that sort; but you know all about the past.  I’ve never mentioned it to you, and, of course, you haven’t to me; and I never should have.  But I will now.  I loved Mary with all my heart and soul, Tom.  She didn’t know how much, and probably I didn’t either.  But that’s done, and no man on earth rejoices in her great happiness more than I do.  And no man on earth is going to be a better or a truer friend to you and her than, please God, I shall be.  But that being so, can’t you see the rest?  My life ended in a way when the dream of my life ended.  I attach no importance to living for itself, and if anything final happened to me it wouldn’t leave a blank anywhere.  You’re different.  In sober honesty you oughtn’t to run into any needless danger—­real or imaginary.  I’m thinking of Mary only when I say that—­not you.”