into staying on with us, evening by evening, until my son's
return. The new project which she had herself unconsciously
suggested involved nothing less than acting forthwith on her own
chance hint, and appealing to her interest and curiosity by the
recital of incidents and adventures drawn from my own personal
experience and (if I could get them to help me) from the
experience of my brothers as well. Strange people and startling
events had connected themselves with Owen's past life as a
clergyman, with Morgan's past life as a doctor, and with my past
life as a lawyer, which offered elements of interest of a strong
and striking kind ready to our hands. If these narratives were
written plainly and unpretendingly; if one of them was read every
evening, under circumstances that should pique the curiosity and
impress the imagination of our young guest, the very occupation
was found for her weary hours which would gratify her tastes,
appeal to her natural interest in the early lives of my brothers
and myself, and lure her insensibly into prolonging her visit by
ten days without exciting a suspicion of our real motive for
detaining her.

I sat down at my desk; I hid my face in my hands to keep out all
impressions of external and present things; and I searched back
through the mysterious labyrinth of the Past, through the dun,
ever-deepening twilight of the years that were gone.

Slowly, out of the awful shadows, the Ghosts of Memory rose about
me. The dead population of a vanished world came back to life
round me, a living man. Men and women whose earthly pilgrimage
had ended long since, returned upon me from the unknown spheres,
and fond, familiar voices burst their way back to my ears through