box-bordered paths, a garden full of old-fashioned flowers whose perfume seemed suddenly to be tearing at some newly-awakened part of the man.  He sat up.  He stared at the little seat among the rose bushes.  Surely he was back again, back again in that strange world, where the flavor of existence was a different thing, where his head had touched the clouds, where all the gross cares and pleasures of his everyday life had fallen away!  Was it the perfume of the roses, of the stocks, which had suddenly appealed to some dormant sense of beauty?  Or had he indeed passed back for a moment into that world concerning which he had sometimes strange, half doubtful thoughts?  He leaned forward, and his eyes wandered feverishly among the hidden places of the garden.  The seat was empty.  Propped up against the hedge was a notice board:  “This House to Let.”

“What on earth are you staring at?” Mrs. Burton demanded, with some acerbity.  “A silly little place like that would be no use to us.  I don’t know what the people who’ve been living there could have been thinking about, to let the garden get into such a state.  Fancy a nasty dark tree like that, too, keeping all the sun away from the house!  I’d have it cut down if it were mine.  What on earth are you looking at, Alfred Burton?”

He turned towards her, heavy-eyed.

“Somewhere under that cedar tree,” he said, “a man’s soul was buried.  I was wondering if its ghost ever walked!”

Mrs. Burton lifted the speaking-tube to her lips.

“You can take the next turning home, John,” she ordered.

The man’s hand was mechanically raised to his hat.  Mrs. Burton leaned back once more among the cushions.

“You and your ghosts!” she exclaimed.  “If you want to sit there, thinking like an owl, you’d better try and think of some of your funny stories for to-night.  You’ll have to sit next that stuck-up Mrs. Bomford, and she takes a bit of amusing.”

THE END.