‘Where do you suppose his soul is?’ asked Skelton curiously.  He asked the question in all reverence; she was not a lady apparently, only a working woman, but there was about her the strong majesty of a noble life.

‘He is not dead yet,’ she replied with evident astonishment.

‘Lor, mum,’ said the apothecary, ’his brain ain’t in working order just at present, and as for his spirit apart from his body, that’s an unknown quantity we scientific men don’t deal in.’

She looked at them both with a look of indescribable compassion, and went away.  Skelton would fain have followed the woman out into the sunny street, but he remained to pay that courtesy which was due to the brusque good nature of his companion.

After examining the room and finding nothing more of interest, he went and talked over the physical circumstances of the case with the parish doctor.  He did not gain much information about the patient’s diseased body, and naturally none whatever concerning the whereabouts of his soul.  The peculiar interest of the case he did not mention to any one.  Afterwards he went back to the neighbourhood by himself, and endeavoured, as quietly as possible, to find out what traces the man’s past life had left upon the minds of his neighbours.  Ten years bring more change to any community than we are apt to suppose; and among the poor, where rude necessity rules rather than choice, there is more change than among the rich.  There were a few who had seen McGair moving up and down the streets, and knew him to have been a book-binder by trade.  One or two remembered the widow Wilkes and her daughter, and could affirm that they had been friends of McGair and had moved away after his illness.  Whither they had gone no one knew.

When there was nothing more to be seen or heard at Yarm, Skelton went home.  Again he threw himself into all the daily interests of his life in order that he might think the more dispassionately of the circumstances of this strange case.  In truth it was not now entirely out of curiosity that he was tempted to think of it; his sympathy had been stirred by the courage and sorrow of the woman whom he had so idly accosted on that bright autumn day only a few weeks before.  She had appealed to him because he had knowledge.  Was all his knowledge, then, powerless to help her?  He believed that the shadowy appearance which dogged her footsteps could only be some projection of mind, whether or not its cause was the strong will of the paralytic transcending the ordinary limits of time and space, he could not tell.  Certainly no discussion as to its nature and origin could in any way aid its victim, and he could only fall back upon the comfort material kindness and sympathy could give.  At last he went down once more to West Chilton, this time for the express purpose of seeing Jen.