"Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you
went to the door?"
"Twice."
"Why, see," said I, "how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were
on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living
man, it did not ring at those times. No, nor at any other time,
except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by
the station communicating with you."
He shook his head. "I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir.
I have never confused the spectre's ring with the man's. The ghost's
ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing
else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I
don't wonder that you failed to hear it. But _I_ heard it."
"And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?"
"It was there."
"Both times?"