I hardly like to say it, but I verily believe my guest had been
drinking heavily, and that he was suffering from _delirium tremens_,
or, as it is commonly called for conciseness, “the blues”; anyway, when
he left the caravan he was mumbling to himself, casting furtive glances
to right and left, and gesticulating very much as he walked down the
road. I am afraid I did the poor man a great wrong in giving him so
much raw spirit; but then I console myself with the knowledge that I
was only indirectly to blame, having merely placed the decanter upon
the table, as I would for any other visitor, and expressed a wish that
he would help himself; with which suggestion he complied by diminishing
my spirit store more rapidly than I had intended. The following day I
sent him a pamphlet upon temperance, as a set-off against my ill-timed
hospitality, and trust that he read it with profit.
My guest was such a confirmed believer in spirits that he would have
made a capital medium for any professional spiritualist. He was
familiar with almost every spirit nameable, and had been at one time or
other possessed of them all, knowing where to find both the best and
the worst of them.