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little cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard!  I hope you are not a sceptic.  It’s so consoling to think. . .”
    “Those plantation boys of mine see ghosts too,” said Renouard grimly.
    The sister of the philosopher sat up stiffly.  What crudeness!  It was always so with this strange young man.
    “Mr. Renouard!  How can you compare the superstitious fancies of your horrible savages with the manifestations . . . “
    Words failed her.  She broke off with a very faint primly angry smile.  She was perhaps the more offended with him because of that flutter at the beginning of the conversation.  And in a moment with perfect tact and dignity she got up from her chair and left him alone.
    Renouard didn’t even look up.  It was not the displeasure of the lady which deprived him of his sleep that night.  He was beginning to forget what simple, honest sleep was like.  His hammock from the ship had been hung for him on a side verandah, and he spent his nights in it on his back, his hands folded on his chest, in a sort of half conscious, oppressed stupor.  In the morning he watched with unseeing eyes the headland come out a shapeless inkblot against the thin light of the false dawn, pass through all the stages of daybreak to the deep purple of its outlined mass nimbed gloriously with the gold of the rising sun.  He listened to the vague sounds of waking within the house: and suddenly he became aware of Luiz standing by the hammock — obviously troubled.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Tse!  Tse!  Tse!”
    “Well, what now?  Trouble with the boys?”
    “No, master.  The gentleman when I take him his bath water he speak to me.  He ask me — he ask — when, when, I think Mr. Walter, he come back.”
    The half-caste’s teeth chattered slightly.  Renouard got out of the hammock.
    “And he is here all the time — eh?”
    Luiz nodded a scared affirmative, but at once protested, “I no see him.  I never.  Not I!  The ignorant wild boys say they see . . . Something!  Ough!”
    He clapped his teeth on another short rattle, and stood there, shrunk, blighted, like a man in a freezing blast.
    “And what did you say to the gentleman?”
    “I say I don’t know — and I clear out.  I — I don’t like to speak of him.”
    “All right.  We shall try to lay that poor ghost,” said Renouard gloomily, going off to a small hut near by to dress.  He was saying to himself: “This fellow will end by giving me away.  The last thing that I . . . No!  That mustn’t be.”  And feeling his hand being forced he discovered the whole extent of his cowardice.
     

CHAPTER X
    That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants.  The crop promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment.  His investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by, for experiments.
    After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of cultivation and such matters.  Then suddenly:
    “By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation boys have been disturbed by a ghost?”
    Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a stiff smile.
    “My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence.  They funk working in a certain field on the slope of the hill.”
    “A ghost here!” exclaimed the amused professor.  “Then our whole conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised.  This island has been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages.  How did a ghost come here.  By air or water?  And why did it leave its native haunts.  Was it from misanthropy?  Was he expelled from some community of spirits?”
    Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone.  The words died on his lips.  Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired.
    “I don’t know.”  Renouard made an effort to appear at ease.  He had, he said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys — a ghost-ridden race.  They had started the scare.  They had probably brought their ghost with them.
    “Let us investigate the matter, Renouard,” proposed the professor half in earnest.  “We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of primitive minds, at