As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought much of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a sense of his old doubts and suspicions revived.  His reason had obliged him to accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an ordinary theft; his instinct remained unconvinced.  There was no superstition connected with his loss.  His own prosperity had not been impaired by it.  On the contrary, he reflected bitterly that the dead man had apparently died only to benefit others.  At such times he recalled, with a pleasure that he knew might become perilous, the tall English girl who had defended Dornton’s memory and echoed his own sympathy.  But that was all over now.

One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past experience, Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest gale.  As he buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of Montgomery Street, it was not strange that his thoughts reverted to that night and the memory of his dead protector.  But reaching his apartment, he sternly banished them with the vanished romance they revived, and lighting his lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work.  He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his door.  A little impatiently he called, “Come in.”

The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the passage a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room.  Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound, and motionless.  He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling lights in the windows opposite, the flash of passing carriage lamps in the street below.  But the figure before him was none other than the dead man of whom he had just been thinking.

The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of unmistakable laughter.  It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet it provoked a disagreeable recollection.  Nevertheless, it dissipated Randolph’s superstitious tremor, for he had never before heard of a ghost who laughed heartily.

“You don’t remember me,” said the man.  “Belay there, and I’ll freshen your memory.”  He stepped back to the door, opened it, put his arm out into the hall, and brought in a portmanteau, closed the door, and appeared before Randolph again with the portmanteau in his hand.  It was the one that had been stolen.  “There!” he said.

“Captain Dornton,” murmured Randolph.

The man laughed again and flung down the portmanteau.  “You’ve got my name pat enough, lad, I see; but I reckoned you’d have spotted me without that portmanteau.”

“I see you’ve got it back,” stammered Randolph in his embarrassment.  “It was—­stolen from me.”