Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/219

 Our ghost is no more to be got rid of by main force than was Dejanira's fatal tunic, clinging, blistering, wrapping its wearer all the closer, that he tore away the smarting flesh by handfuls. Friends will advise us to make the best of it, and no doubt their counsel is excellent though gratuitous, wanting indeed nothing but the supplementary information, how we are to make the best of that which is confessedly at its worst. Enemies opine that we are weak fools, and deserve to be vanquished for our want of courage—an argument that would hold equally good with every combatant overpowered by superior strength; and all the time the ghost that haunted us sits aloft, laughing our helplessness to scorn, cold, pitiless, inexorable, and always

If we cannot get rid of him, he will sap