Highlander, who kept his slippered feet on the top of the stove, and whose costume consisted of a kilt, a British warm, a grey hospital dressing-gown, and four pairs of socks, told the story of the Camerons at First Ypres, and of the Lowland subaltern who knew no Gaelic and suddenly found himself encouraging his men with some ancient Highland rigmarole.  The poor chap had a racking bronchial cough, which suggested that his country might well use him on some warmer battle-ground than Flanders.  He seemed a bit of a scholar and explained the Cameron business in a lot of long words.

I remember how the talk meandered on as talk does when men are idle and thinking about the next day.  I didn’t pay much attention, for I was reflecting on a change I meant to make in one of my battalion commands, when a fresh voice broke in.  It belonged to a Canadian captain from Winnipeg, a very silent fellow who smoked shag tobacco.

‘There’s a lot of ghosts in this darned country,’ he said.

Then he started to tell about what happened to him when his division was last back in rest billets.  He had a staff job and put up with the divisional command at an old French chateau.  They had only a little bit of the house; the rest was shut up, but the passages were so tortuous that it was difficult to keep from wandering into the unoccupied part.  One night, he said, he woke with a mighty thirst, and, since he wasn’t going to get cholera by drinking the local water in his bedroom, he started out for the room they messed in to try to pick up a whisky-and-soda.  He couldn’t find it, though he knew the road like his own name.  He admitted he might have taken a wrong turning, but he didn’t think so.  Anyway he landed in a passage which he had never seen before, and, since he had no candle, he tried to retrace his steps.  Again he went wrong, and groped on till he saw a faint light which he thought must be the room of the G.S.O., a good fellow and a friend of his.  So he barged in, and found a big, dim salon with two figures in it and a lamp burning between them, and a queer, unpleasant smell about.  He took a step forward, and then he saw that the figures had no faces.  That fairly loosened his joints with fear, and he gave a cry.  One of the two ran towards him, the lamp went out, and the sickly scent caught suddenly at his throat.  After that he knew nothing till he awoke in his own bed next morning with a splitting headache.  He said he got the General’s permission and went over all the unoccupied part of the house, but he couldn’t find the room.  Dust lay thick on everything, and there was no sign of recent human presence.

I give the story as he told it in his drawling voice.  ’I reckon that was the genuine article in ghosts.  You don’t believe me and conclude I was drunk?  I wasn’t.  There isn’t any drink concocted yet that could lay me out like that.  I just struck a crack in the old universe and pushed my head outside.  It may happen to you boys any day.’