Masters hesitated.

“All the same, I very much wish the reverend gentleman would give Scotland Yard a chance.  If they fall, then he can wipe their eye after—­excuse my language, Sir Walter.  I’ve read a lot about the spirits, being terrible interested in ’em, as all human men must be; and I hear that running after ’em often brings trouble.  I don’t mean to your life, Sir Walter, but to your wits.  People get cracked on ’em and have to be locked up.  I stopped everybody frightening themselves into ’sterics at dinner to-day; but you could see how it took ’em; and, whether or no, I do beg Mr. May to be so kind as to let me sit up along with him to-night.

“You never hear of two people getting into trouble with these here customers, and while he was going for this blackguard ghost in the name of the Lord, I could keep my weather eye lifting for trouble.  ’Tis a matter for common sense and keeping your nerve, in my opinion, and we don’t want another death on our hands, I suppose.  There’ll be half the mountebanks and photograph men and newspaper men in the land here to-morrow, and ’twill take me all my time to keep ’em from over-running the house.  Because if they could come in their scores for the late captain—­poor gentleman!—­what won’t they try now this here famous detective has been done in?”

“Henry deplored the same thing,” said Mary.  “And I answer again, as I answered then,” replied Septimus May.  “You mean well, Sir Walter, and your butler means well; but you propose an act in direct opposition to the principle that inspires me.”

“What do you expect to happen?” asked Mary.  “Do you suppose you will see something, and that something will tell you what it is, and why it killed dear Tom?”

“That, at any rate, would be a very great blessing to the living,” said her father.

“The least the creature could do, in my humble opinion,” ventured Masters.

But Septimus May deprecated such curiosity.

“Hope for no such thing, and do not dwell upon what is to happen until I am able to tell you what does happen,” he answered.  “Allow no human weakness, no desire to learn the secrets of another world, to distract your thoughts.  I am only concerned with what I know beyond possibility of doubt is my duty—­to be entered upon as swiftly as possible.  I hear my call in the very voice of the wind shouting round the house to-night.  But beyond my duty I do not seek.  Whether information awaits me, whether some manifestation indicating my success and valuable to humanity will be granted, I cannot say.  I do not stop now to think about that.

“Alone I do this thing—­yet not alone, for my hand is in my Maker’s hand.  Your part will not be to accompany me.  Let each man and woman be informed of what I do, and let them lift a petition for me, that my work be crowned with success.  But let them not assume that to-morrow I shall have anything to impart.  The night may be one of peace within, though so stormy without.  I may pray till dawn with no knowledge how my prayer prospers, or I may be called to face a being that no human eye has ever seen and lived.  These things are hidden from us.”