"He was an ancestor of yours, I presume," said Paul, hoping to gain some clew to the man's ident.i.ty.

"No," answered Ah Ben, "he was not."

"Pardon the interruption," added Paul, fearing he had annoyed the speaker.

"Naturally, in a country without roads, or even wagon trails,"

continued the old man, without noticing the apology, "it was years before a house of this size could be completed, as every brick and nearly every stick of timber was brought from England. These, of course, were conveyed by water as far as the rivers permitted, the rest of the journey being performed upon sleds drawn by oxen. But it was Guir's hobby, and in the course of a dozen or fifteen years the job was completed, and the house stood as you see it now. Then the owner set himself to work with brush, canvas, and chisel to decorate his home, and make it, according to his ideas, as beautiful and suggestive of his early youth as imaginable. With his own hands, Mr.

Henley, he painted most of these pictures, although his three daughters, inheriting his tastes, a.s.sisted him. And thus, as the years rolled by, Guir House became more and more a museum of artistic efforts, embracing many unusual subjects, and in every degree of perfection. The broad acres of the estate produced much that was necessary toward the maintenance of life, and what they lacked was supplied once a year from a distant settlement near the coast. As you can readily understand, there were no neighbors, and but occasional visits from the red man, who looked distrustfully upon the pale-face.

This feeling became mutual, and trifling acts of hostility on the part of the natives grew both in frequency and magnitude.

Depredations upon Guir's fields and cattle were at first ignored, in the effort to maintain peace, but in time it became necessary to resist them. Upon one occasion, a raid upon a distant field was successfully repulsed, with the aid of his wife and three daughters, attired in men's clothing and mounted upon fast horses. The Indians were so completely surprised by the ruse, being apparently attacked by five men, where they had believed there was only one, that they fled, completely routed, nor did they return for several years.

Meanwhile, fearing another and closer attack, Guir converted one of the lower rooms of his house into an impenetrable and una.s.sailable place of refuge. The windows were walled up, to correspond with the stonework of the house, leaving no suspicion of there having been once an opening. Likewise the doors were treated, and then carefully plastered both within and without, with the exception of one, which he made anew, to communicate with a private stairway leading from one of the upper bedrooms. This was the only entrance to the dark retreat, and a heavy bolt was placed upon the inside, to be used by the family in case of attack. There was no reason to suppose that a marauding party would ever find the way to this secret chamber, as the entrance was carefully covered by a scuttle in the floor of a dark closet; and the place being thoroughly fire-proof, the family felt unusually secure in the possession of their new retreat."

"I think I have seen the stairway you speak of," said Paul.

"Yes," answered the old man, "it communicates with the closet of your room.

"One day Guir had left his home. He had ridden alone into the distant hills to dispute the range for some cattle with his natural enemy, the red man. The pow-wow had been long and trying, and it was only with the setting sun that he had come to a proper understanding, as he supposed, with the ugly chief who dominated the region about.

"It was midnight when he reached his home. He pounded sharply on the door; but his good wife, who never retired without him, failed to answer the summons. So, after repeated knocks, Guir forced the door and entered. All was dark. An unearthly stillness pervaded the air, and a horrid suspicion forced itself upon him while groping his way forward to secure a light. Finding the chimney, he raked together a few coals, which he blew into a flame, and then, with trembling hands, lighted the candle upon the shelf above. Looking about him, Guir's heart sank. His house had been wrecked. His pictures, the work of years, were scattered in fragments about the floor. The windows were smashed, and the hall starred with broken gla.s.s. Not an ornament, not a treasure remained intact. But this he knew was as nothing to the horrible sight which he expected momentarily to greet his eyes. He called aloud to each member of his family, in the failing hope that some one would answer; but no sound broke the awful stillness. Suddenly he bethought him of the secret chamber, and with a wild prayer that his loved ones had been able to reach it in safety, and were still in hiding there, he started down the narrow stairs in search. Reaching the bottom, he found that the door had been wrenched from its hinges and thrown to the ground; and then Guir's heart sank, never to rise again. Stepping across the threshold of the room, candle in hand, a vision of blood swam before his eyes, and the dimly-burning light revealed the horror-stricken faces of his murdered family. Not one was left to tell the tale, but the story pictured before him was unmistakable in every detail. The treacherous natives had first tortured and then butchered them. For a time he stood transfixed with horror, unable to remove his eyes from the awful scene, or his feet from the spot where he had first beheld it; then, with the cry of sudden madness, he threw himself beside the bleeding corpses and lost all consciousness. How long he remained there was problematical, but on awaking Guir was still in the dark, and where he had fallen. At that moment a strange and overpowering desire seized him. He must paint the portraits of his murdered family before it became too late. Had he been sane, such a ghastly thought would never have possessed him; but Guir was crazed, and for days and nights following he worked in that dismal vault, by the light of a smoking lamp, at the task he had set himself, his fired imagination even intensifying the horrors of the grewsome tableau.

"Upon each canvas he depicted the awful countenance which fact and fancy had imprinted upon his brain. Guir painted not only what he saw, but what he imagined he saw--dreadful faces, loaded with torture and despair. When completed, he hung them upon the walls of the room, and then with his own hands bricked up the entrance from within, having first carefully replaced and bolted the door. When Guir had thus entombed himself, he lay down again upon the floor, and then, still a madman, opened a vein in his wrist. The letting of blood may have sobered him or restored his mental equilibrium; for suddenly, with a wild change in his feelings, he bounded to his feet and repented. Again he was in darkness, and could not guess how much time had elapsed since his fatal act. Staggering to the closed doorway, he endeavored to tear away the bricks he had so recently placed there, but the mortar was hardening fast, and he was unable to find his trowel. Groping frantically along the floor, he searched in vain for some tool to open the vault in which he was buried, and then, with the anguish of despair, dropped again upon the ground to await his fate. Thus Guir died, in an agony of remorse, and with the intensest desire to live."

Ah Ben stopped suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon Henley, as if trying to read his thoughts.

"There is one thing in that story that strikes me as very peculiar,"

observed Paul, returning his host's look with interest.

"And what is that?" answered the old man, his eyes still fixed on Henley's face.

"The fact that you are able to repeat with such circ.u.mstantial detail the feelings and actions of a man who died under such peculiar conditions, and quite alone."

"It might indeed appear strange to you, Mr. Henley, but my familiarity with the case enables me to speak with knowledge and accuracy."

"And would you mind telling me how that is possible?" inquired Paul.

"_Because I am the man Guir himself; and I have lived on through such ages of agony that I have no longer the will or desire to appear other than as the ancient wreck before you_."

Paul started.

"Do you mean to tell me then that I am talking to a ghost?" he cried in dismay.

"As you please, Mr. Henley; but ghosts are not so different from ordinary people--that is, when they have become materialized. I have just now shown you the real condition of this old house, or rather the way in which the majority of men see it. I do not hesitate, therefore, to show you the ghost that haunts it; nor do I object to explaining the dreadful cause of the haunting, or a little of the philosophy of hauntings in general."

Paul looked aghast. Easy enough was it now to comprehend how the man had talked so familiarly of death and the next life after having actually crossed the threshold and pa.s.sed into the realm of experience. But there was something too real, too natural about this personality to accept the remark as literal. Familiarity with Ah Ben had shown him to be a man. Paul felt sure of it. And yet here were revealed mysteries never dreamed of; one of which was even now producing an occult spell. Henley drew a deep breath in agony of spirit.

After a moment's pause, the old man continued:

"Ghosts, Mr. Henley, are as real as you; and when a spirit returns to earth in visible form, it is the result of some disquieting influence immediately before the death of the body, or, as I might say, previous to the new life. At the hour of physical birth, such influences cause idiocy or such imperfection of the bodily functions that death ensues, and the spirit returns to seek another entrance into the world of matter. When a man dies dominated by some intense earthly desire, his mind is barred against the higher powers and greater possibilities of spirit; his whole nature is closed against their reception, so that he perceives and hopes for nothing save the continuance of that life which has so completely filled his nature.

His old environment overpowers the new by the very force of his will; and if this continues, he becomes not only a haunting spirit, but a materialized one, visible to certain people under certain conditions, and compelled to live out his life amid the scenes which had so attracted him. This, Mr. Henley, has been my case. I shall live upon earth, and be visible to the spiritually susceptible, until the strong impression made at the hour of death shall have worn away."

"And the young lady, is she your daughter?" inquired Paul.

"She is my daughter," answered the old man solemnly.

"How comes it, then, that she addresses you by so singular a name?"

"It is the one she first learned to use in infancy. As I partially explained to you, my mother was a Hindoo, while my father was English. The name Ah Ben belongs to the maternal side of my family."

"Another question--more vital than any I have yet asked, because it concerns my own well-being and happiness," continued Paul; "how is it possible that Dorothy can live in a place like this with a being who is only semi-material?

"Because her nature is double, as is mine," answered the old man.

"Dorothy, like her sisters and mother, pa.s.sed out of this life more than a hundred and fifty years ago."

"And did the same causes operate to bring her back to earth?"

Ah Ben became more serious than ever as he answered: "You have touched upon the sorest point of all, and one which requires further elucidation. Sudden and unnatural death has a r.e.t.a.r.ding tendency upon the spirit's progress; but where one has caused his own destruction, the evil resulting is incalculable. I was a suicide; and ten thousand times over had I better have borne all the ills that earth could heap upon me, than have stooped to such folly. For in what has it resulted?

A prolonged mental agony, such as you can never conceive; for I have no home in heaven nor earth, but am forced to wander amid the shadows of each world, unrecognized by those either above or below me. Here I am shunned upon every hand, and, as you saw for yourself, I was equally avoided in Levachan. But that is not all; in the ignorance and selfishness of my grief, I yearned for my lost ones with a solicitude, a consuming fierceness and power of will which insanity only can equal.

By nature I was intense; and even had I not committed the fatal act, my vitality would have burned itself away with the awful concentration of feeling. But it must be remembered that I was not the only sufferer from this pitiful lack of self-control. The stronger desires and emotions of the living influence the dead--I use the words in their common acceptation for the sake of convenience--and here is where I caused such incalculable injury to my own child; for Dorothy, having entered the spirit world with inferior powers of resistance, fell under the spell I had wrought, and joined me in the haunting of this old house.

Here, Mr. Henley, am I, a suicide, justly deserving the punishment I receive; but there is my child, as innocent as the air of heaven, forced to suffer with me, and it is no small part of my chastis.e.m.e.nt to realize this fact. People fly from us as they would from pestilence, both in this world and the other, although many of the dwellers in the higher state, from their greater knowledge and loftier development, simply avoid us. And we can not criticise their action in either world, for we are not adapted to either state. We are outcasts."

Ah Ben paused for a moment, and then became deeply impressive, as he added:

"Mr. Henley, let the experience of one who has suffered, and who will continue to suffer more than you can possibly understand--let his experience, I say, warn you against the unreasonable yearning for the return of those who have pa.s.sed on to their spiritual state! Here our eyes are blinded to the blessedness to come, and it is well it is so; for, were it otherwise, the discipline of earth life would be lost, as too monstrous to be endured. No man could submit to the restraints of matter, with the power and freedom of spirit in sight. If once I could have realized the dreadful results entailed upon what I had lost, by my effort to recover it, I would have known that the blackest curse would have been trifling by contrast. Let the dead rest! and let one who knows persuade you that their entrance into spirit life is a time rather for rejoicing than regret!"

"And is Dorothy to suffer as you have suffered, for what was no fault of hers?" demanded Paul.

"Yes," said Ah Ben; "the law of Karma is the law of nature and the law of G.o.d; and while ordinarily she would have pa.s.sed safely on in the possession of her new-born powers, the pitfall which I blindly laid beset her unwary feet, and she fell. There is but one course open; but one way in which Dorothy can reach either heaven or earth, by a shorter road than that which I am compelled to travel. It is simple, and yet one which, under the circ.u.mstances, is almost impossible to achieve; and this from the fact that it requires the cooperation of a human being."

"I should imagine that any one with the ordinary feelings of humanity would gladly do what he could to a.s.sist such an unhappy fellow-creature!" exclaimed Paul.

"But she is not a fellow-creature," urged the old man.

"True, but I understood you to say that she might become one with the cooperation of a human being."

"I did," Ah Ben replied; "but where is that to be found?"

"Not knowing the nature of the task, it would be difficult to say,"

answered Paul, "but I will adhere to my first proposition, that one with the ordinary feelings of humanity would gladly do what he could."

"Mr. Henley, have you the ordinary feelings of humanity?"

"I hope so," answered Paul.

"Would you be willing to marry a ghost, and be haunted for the rest of your life; for the ghost would be sure to outlive you?"

Paul started.

"I have put the case too strongly," continued Ah Ben; "Dorothy is not a ghost in the ordinary sense. She is a materialized spirit, and that, my dear friend, is exactly what you are, with this difference: you have practically no control over your body; while she, having returned from the summer land abnormally, can, like myself, become invisible at will; but, upon the other hand, she is not always visible, even to those whom she would like to have see her. In short, as I have told you before, we belong to neither one world nor the other. But through union with a human creature, Dorothy can once more a.s.sume the functions of mortality, and after another period of earth life, become fitted again for the land of spirits."