Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts by A. T. Quiller-Couch

Title Information
OLD FIRES AND PROFITABLE GHOSTS consists of stories of revenants; persons who, either in spirit or in body, revisit old scenes, return upon old shelves or old emotions, or relate a message from a world beyond perception." Quiller-Couch is the master of an exquisite art. It is most persuasively present when his revenants are bodily than when they are spiritistic. I

Every-day material, as this accomplished writer treats it, is weird enough and poetic. We are not sure that there does not lurk a subtler thrill in the figure of the Prophet Elisha in his old age coming painfully over the rough mountain path to the Plain of Jezreel and meeting again the Shunammite woman, than in the ghostly night ride of the living man and his dead friend into the place of departed spirits.

"The Penance of John Emmet," is a story that strikes home as true to the point of inevitability. "The Lady of the Red Admirals" is a charming example of the author's lighter touch at its best. "The Singular Adventure of a Small Free-Trader" is another.  Whichever story makes its appeal to the reader, he will hardly fail to find somewhere the power, poetry, and dramatic instinct without morbidness of which a book by this writer always holds the promise.

Format: Sony Reader