Ghosts I have Met and Some Others

[Illustration: "HE WAS AMPLY PROTECTED"]

"I think so myself," I retorted, coldly. "It's rather late in the
day for you to be sorry, though. If you'll show your sincerity by
going away and never crossing my path again, I may believe in you."

"Ah!" he said, "I've shown it in another way. Indeed I have. You
know I have some conscience, though, to tell the truth, I haven't
made much use of it. This time, however, as I considered the
situation, a little voice rose up within me and said: 'It's all
right, old chap, to be rough on this person; make him mad and shove
him every which way; but don't destroy his work. His work is what he
lives by--'"

"Yes," I interrupted, "and after what I told you on the steamer
about what I would do to you when we got on even terms, you are not
anxious to have me die. I know just how you feel. No thing likes to
contemplate that paralysis that will surely fall upon you when my
ghost begins to get in its fine work. I'm putting it in training
now."

"You poor droll mortal!" laughed the cockney. "You poor droll
mortal! As if I could ever be afraid of that! What is the matter
with my going into training myself? Two can train, you know--even
three. You almost make me feel sorry I tried to remedy the loss of
those MSS."

Somehow or other a sense of some new misfortune came upon me.

"What?" I said, nervously.

"I say I'm almost sorry I tried to remedy the loss of those
manuscripts. Composition, particularly poetry, is devilish hard for
me--I admit it--and when I think of how I toiled over my substitutes
for your ruined stuff, and see how very ungrateful you are, I grudge
the effort."

"I don't understand you," I said, anxiously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I have written and sent out to the editors of the
papers you write for a half a dozen poems and short stories."

"What has all that got to do with me?" I demanded.

"A great deal," he said. "You'll get the pay. _I signed your name to
'em_."

"Y--you--you--you--did what?" I cried.