The Ghost of Guir House

"I don't know whether I quite understand you," said Paul.

Ah Ben looked at him searchingly with his luminous, deep-set eyes.

"Can gold restore an idiot's mind," he inquired, "or a cripple the

use of his limbs? Would a mountain of gold add one iota to the power

of your soul? And yet it is gold that men have labored for since the

earth was made. Could they once understand its real limitations? What

a different planet we should have!"

"That is all very well," answered Henley; "but this personal power of

which you speak is born in a man, and is not to be acquired by

anything he can do; whereas, the battle for wealth can be fought in a

field open to all."

"There again I must beg to differ from you," said Ah Ben. "There is a

law for the acquirement of this soul-power which is as fixed and

certain as the law of gravitation; and when a man has once gained it,

he has no more use for worldly wealth than he has for the drainings

of a sewer."

"Do you mean to say that by a course of life--"

"I do, and it is this: Self-control is the law of psychic power."

"Then, according to your theory, the better mastery a man has over

himself, the more he can accomplish and the greater his happiness?"

"I go still further," the old man continued. "I claim that self-control

is the only source of happiness, and that he who can control his

body--and by this I mean his eyes, his nerves, his tongue, his appetites

and passions--can control other men; but he who is master of his mind,

his thoughts, his desires, his emotions, has the world in a sling. Such

a man is all powerful; there is nothing he can not accomplish; there is

no force that can stand against him."

The fire had died out, save for a few glowing embers, but Ah Ben's

singular face seemed to draw unto itself what light there was, and to

hold Henley's eyes in a kind of mesmeric fascination. He had put off

going to bed for the sole purpose of gaining some knowledge of the

house and its inmates; and yet now, with apparently nothing to hinder

his investigations, he felt an unaccountable diffidence about making

the inquiries. An impression that the man was a mind-reader had

doubtless increased this embarrassment, and yet he had had no

evidence of this kind, nor anything to indicate such a fact beyond

the keen, penetrating power of those marvelous eyes. Paul felt that

there was a mental chasm, deep and wide and impassable, that yawned

between him and the strange individual before him. Such stupendous

power of will as lodged within that brain could sport with the forces

of nature, suspend or reverse the action of law, disintegrate matter,

or create it. At least such was the impression which Mr. Henley had

received.