The actual performance of this practical act made his experience of the last few minutes seem fanciful, unreal.

He was no longer under the spell of that ghostly column and he was not so sure that he believed in it.

To bestir himself upon the authority of such an uncanny warning seemed rather foolish.

He almost found it easier, now, to believe that he had seen some spectral thing in the graveyard.
As he emerged from the house the familiar things about him seemed to mock his vision of a warning message in the sky.

The startled chickens in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense.