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children shrieking by that made her say: “Quickly!” And she all but lifted and carried the wicker man in the wake of the boys and girls.
    “No,” cried the old passenger. “The noise!”
    “It’s special!” The nurse hustled him through a door. “A medicine! Here!” The old man stared around. “Why,” he murmured. “This is—a playroom.” And she steered him into the midst of all the screams and running.
    “Children!” she called.
    The children froze.
    “Story-telling time!”
    They were about to run again when she added, “Ghost story-telling time!” She pointed casually to the ghastly passenger, whose pale moth fingers grasped the scarf about his icy throat.
    “All fell down !” said the nurse.
    The children plummeted with squeals to the floor. All about the Orient traveler, like Indians around a tepee, they stared up along his body to where blizzards ran odd temperatures in his gaping mouth.
    He wavered. She quickly said:
    “You do believe in ghosts, yes ?”
    “Oh, yes !” was the shout. “Yes!”
    It was as if a ramrod had shot up his spine. The Orient traveler stiffened. The most brittle of tiny flinty sparks fired his eyes. Winter roses budded in his cheeks. And the more the children leaned, the taller he grew, and the warmer his complexion. With one icicle finger he pointed at their faces.
    “I,” he whispered, “I,” a pause. “Shall tell you a frightful tale. About a real ghost!”
    “Oh, yes !” cried the children.
    And he began to talk and as the fever of his tongue conjured fogs, lured mists and invited rains, the children hugged and crowded close, a bed of charcoals on which he happily baked. And as he talked Nurse Halliday, backed off near the door, saw what he saw across the haunted sea, the ghost cliffs, the chalk cliffs, the safe cliffs of Dover and not so far beyond, waiting, the whispering towers, the murmuring castle deeps, where phantoms were as they had always been, with the still attics waiting. And staring, the old nurse felt her hand creep up her lapel toward her thermometer. She felt her own pulse. A brief darkness touched her eyes.
    And then one child said: “Who are you?”
    And gathering his gossamer shroud, the ghastly passenger whetted his imagination, and replied.
    It was only the sound of the ferry landing whistle that cut short the long telling of midnight tales. And the parents poured in to seize their lost children, away from the Orient gentleman with the ghastly eyes whose gently raving mouth shivered their marrows as he whispered and whispered until the ferry nudged the dock and the last boy was dragged, protesting, away, leaving the old man and his nurse alone in the children’s playroom as the ferry stopped shuddering its delicious shudders, as if it had listened, heard, and deliriously enjoyed the long-before-dawn tales.
    At the gangplank, the Orient traveler said, with a touch of briskness, “No. I’ll need no help going down. Watch!”
    And he strode down the plank. And even as the children had been tonic for his color, height, and vocal cords, so the closer he came to England, pacing, the firmer his stride, and when he actually touched the dock, a small happy burst of sound erupted from his thin lips and the nurse, behind him, stopped frowning, and let him run toward the train.
    And seeing him dash, like a child before her, she could only stand, riven with delight and something more than delight And he ran and her heart ran with him and suddenly knew a stab of amazing pain, and a lid of darkness struck her and she swooned.
    Hurrying, the ghastly passenger did not notice that the old nurse was not beside or behind him, so eagerly did he go.
    At the train he gasped, “There!” safely grasping the compartment handle. Only then did he sense a loss, and turned.
    Minerva Halliday was not there.
    And yet, an instant later, she arrived, looking paler than before, but with an incredibly radiant smile. She wavered and almost fell. This time it was he