persecuting him. Most people did worry him horribly."

A glance flashed between the two middle-aged listeners. It was a
peculiar glance, full of a half-denied portent. Then Miss Fowler's
fingers, true to their traditions, loosened their grip on her needles
and casually smoothed out her work.

"I have asked you not to speak of that," she mentioned, quietly.

"I know. But of course there was no doubt at all that he was sa--was
entirely recovered before his death. Don't you think so, sir?"

His uncle laid down the paper and fixed the young man with the gray,
unsheathed keenness that had sent so many witnesses grovelling to the
naked truth. "No doubt whatever. I always held, and so did both the
physicians, that his lack of balance was a temporary and sporadic thing,
brought on by overwork--and certain unhappy conditions of his life.
There has never been any such taint in our branch of the family."

"No-o, so they say," Hugh agreed. "One of our forebears did see ghosts,
but that was rather the fashion. And his father, that old Johnnie over
the fireplace--you take after him, Aunt Maria--he was the prize
witch-smeller of his generation, and he condemned all the young and
pretty ones. That hardly seems well-balanced."

"Collaterals on the distaff side," Mr. Fowler put in hastily. "If you
would read Mendel--"

"Mendel? I have read about him." He raised the forefinger of his right
hand. "Very suggestive. If your father was a black rabbit"--he raised