"
Then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which
I was sitting and I saw him.
But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour
that he was standing somewhere near me.
You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once
that strange uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen
standing beside you, in a darkened room, let us say, with
a dying fire, when the night has grown late, and the
October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the
thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts
for a moment clear upon our dreaming sense.
You _have_ had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind
telling me about it. Stop. I don't want to hear about
that strange presentiment you had the night your Aunt
Eliza broke her leg. Don't let's bother with _your_
experience. I want to tell mine.
"You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend," repeated
Father Time, "quite wrong."
"_Young_ friend?" I said, my mind, as one's mind is apt
to in such a case, running to an unimportant detail. "Why
do you call me young?"
"Your pardon," he answered gently--he had a gentle way
with him, had Father Time. "The fault is in my failing
eyes. I took you at first sight for something under a
hundred.
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