Come back, O Love! and freshen me, and,
like a rill, flow down my closing years!"
Duff Salter's shoulder was touched as he ceased to speak, and he found
young Calvin Van de Lear behind him.
"I have followed you out to the country," said the young man, howling in
the elder's ear, "because I wanted to talk to you aloud, as I couldn't
do in Kensington."
Duff Salter drew his storied ivory tablets on the divinity student, and
said, crisply, "Write!"
"No, old man, that's not my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of
nothing impressive being said, and I want to convince you."
"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "Young man, if you stun my ear
that way a third time I'll knock you down. I'm deaf, it's true, but I'm
not a hallooing scale to try your lungs on. If you won't write, we can't
talk."
With impatience, yet smiling, Calvin Van de Lear wrote on the tablets,
"Have you seen the ghost?"
"Ghost?"
"Yes, the ghosts of the murdered men!"
"I never saw a ghost of anything in my life. What men?"
"William Zane and Sayler Rainey."
"Who has seen them?"
"Several people. Some say it's but one that has been seen. Zane's ghost
walks, anyway, in Kensington."
"What for?"
"The fishwomen and other superstitious people say, because their
murderers have not been punished.
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