1 She did surprise two of them so much that Meg started as if she had seen a ghost, and Mr. Brooke vanished into the study.
2 She put it away, but it haunted her, not delightfully as a new dress should, but dreadfully like the ghost of a folly that was not easily laid.
3 She opened with hospitable haste, and started as if another ghost had come to surprise her, for there stood a tall bearded gentleman, beaming on her from the darkness like a midnight sun.
4 You must go to the house of Hades and of dread Proserpine to consult the ghost of the blind Theban prophet Teiresias, whose reason is still unshaken.
5 Then draw your sword and sit there, so as to prevent any other poor ghost from coming near the spilt blood before Teiresias shall have answered your questions.
6 The first ghost that came was that of my comrade Elpenor, for he had not yet been laid beneath the earth.
7 Then came the ghost of my dead mother Anticlea, daughter to Autolycus.
8 Then came also the ghost of Theban Teiresias, with his golden sceptre in his hand.
9 '"'Mother,' said I, 'I was forced to come here to consult the ghost of the Theban prophet Teiresias.'
10 Then I tried to find some way of embracing my poor mother's ghost.
11 When Proserpine had dismissed the female ghosts in all directions, the ghost of Agamemnon son of Atreus came sadly up to me, surrounded by those who had perished with him in the house of Aegisthus.
12 When I had told him this, the ghost of Achilles strode off across a meadow full of asphodel, exulting over what I had said concerning the prowess of his son.
13 Here they found the ghost of Achilles son of Peleus, with those of Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax, who was the finest and handsomest man of all the Danaans after the son of Peleus himself.
14 They gathered round the ghost of the son of Peleus, and the ghost of Agamemnon joined them, sorrowing bitterly.
15 Round him were gathered also the ghosts of those who had perished with him in the house of Aegisthus; and the ghost of Achilles spoke first.