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“I remember it,” said my brother, moving uneasily in his chair, and this time I had to look behind me, there was no help for it.

“I went to the hospital soon after that,” Mr. Whiston said next. “I was not badly wounded at all, but the exposure in that rainy weather played the mischief with me, and I was discharged, and, before you were mustered out, I went to South America, where a friend of mine wished me to go into business with him. I did capitally well, and I grew very strong. The climate suited me, and I used to go on those long horseback rides into the interior among the plantations that I told you about last night. My partner disliked that branch of the business far more than I did; so he left it almost wholly to me. I did not think often about Henry, though I mourned so much over his death at first, and I never was less nervous in my life.

“One evening I had just returned to Rio after an absence of several weeks, and I went to dine with some friends of mine. It was a terribly hot night, and after dinner we went out in the harbor for a sail, as the moon would be up later. There was not much wind, however; and the two boatmen took the oars, and we struck out farther, hoping to catch a breeze beyond the shipping. It was very dark, and suddenly there came by a large, heavy boat which nearly ran us down. Our men shouted angrily, and the other sailors swore; but there was no accident after all. They seemed to be drunk, and we were all in the shadow of a brig that was lying at anchor; but, Ainslie! as that boat slid by–I was half lying in the stern of ours, and so close that I could have touched it–I saw Henry Dunster’s face as plainly as I see yours now. It turned me cold for a minute, and gave me an awful shock. I told the men to give chase; and they, thinking I was angry at the carelessness, bent to their oars with a will, and overhauled them. There were two men on board,–one a negro, and the other an old gray-haired sailor,–not in the least like Henry. And I said I had been half asleep, and dreamed it was his face. But there was no mistaking him; it was the most vivid thing; it was the man himself I saw for that one horrible minute. And late the next night I was sitting in my own sleeping-room. I had reasoned myself out of the thing as well as I could, and said I was tired, and not as well as usual, and all that; and I had thought of it as calmly as possible. I sat with my back toward the window; but I was facing a mirror, and suddenly I had a strange feeling, and looked up to see in the mirror Dunster’s face at the window looking in. It was staring straight at me; and I met the eyes, and that was the last I knew: I lost my senses. Only a monkey could have climbed there. There was a frail vine that clung to the stone, and in the morning there was no trace of any creature.

“And since then he follows me. I saw that haggard, wretched face of his last night when I sat here at the table; and I see him watching me if I look among a crowd of people, and, if I look back along a street, he is always coming towards me; but, when he gets near, he vanishes, and sometimes at the theatre he will be among the actors all the evening. Nobody sees him but me, but every month I see him oftener, and his face grows out of the darkness at night; and sometimes, when I talk with any one, the face will fade out, and Dunster’s comes in its place. It is killing me, Ainslie. I have fought against it; I have wandered half over the world trying to get rid of it, but it is no use. For a few days in a strange place, sometimes for weeks, I did not see him at first; but I know he is always watching me now, and I see him every day.”