_The Leather Funnel_, A. Conan Doyle.

_The Return of Imray's Ghost_, Rudyard Kipling.

_A Gentle Ghost_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.



THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]

_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_


Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has
been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then,
in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray
of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a
chance encounter.

It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves