munication of the vicar the previous night had scarcely been out of his thoughts since. It troubled him. In spite of himself, of his good sense and reason, there was an undercurrent of uneasiness at work within him. Why should there be? Lionel could not have explained had he been required to do it. That Frederick Massingbird was dead and buried, there could be no shade of doubt: and ghosts had no place in the creed of Lionel Verner. All true: but the consciousness of uneasiness was there, and he could not ignore it.
In the last few days, the old feeling touching Lucy had been revived with unpleasant force. Since that night which she had spent at his house, when they saw, or fancied they saw, a man hiding himself under the tree, he had thought of her more than was agreeable; more than was right, he would have said, but that he saw not how to avoid it. The little episode of this morning at his mother’s house had served to open his eyes most completely: to show him how intense was his love for Lucy Tempest. It must be confessed that his wife did little towards striving to retain his love.
He went along, thinking of these things: he would have put them from him; but he could not. The more he tried, the more unpleasantly vivid they became. “Tush!” said Lionel. “I must be getting nervous! I’ll ask Jan to give me a draught.”
He was passing Dr. West’s as he spoke, and he turned into the surgery. Sitting on the bung of a large stone jar was Master Cheese, his attitude a disconsolate one, his expression of countenance rebellious.
“Is Mr. Jan at home?” asked Lionel.
“No, he’s not at home, sir,” replied Master Cheese, as if the fact were some personal grievance of his own. “Here’s all the patients, all the making up of the physic left in my charge, and I’d like to know how I am to do it? I can’t go out fifty ways at a time?”
“And so you expedite the matter by not going to one! Where is Mr. Jan?”
“He was fetched out in the night to that beautiful Ally Hook,” grumbled Master Cheese. “It’s a shame, sir, folks are saying, for him to give his time to her. I had to leave my warm bed and march out to that fanciful Mother Ellis through it, who’s always getting the spasms. And I had about forty poor here this morning, and couldn’t get a bit of comfortable breakfast for ’em. Miss Debb, she never kept my bacon warm, or anything; and somebody had eaten the meat out of the veal pie when I got back. Jan will have those horrid poor here twice a week, and if I speak against it, he tells me to hold my tongue.”
“But is Mr. Jan not back yet from Hook’s?”
“No, sir, he’s not,” was the resentful response. “He has never come back at all since he went, and that was at four o’clock this morning. If he had gone to cut off all the arms in the house he couldn’t have been longer! And I wish him joy of it! He’ll get no breakfast. They have got nothing for themselves but bread and water.”
Lionel left his draught an open question, and departed. As he turned into the principal street again, he saw Master Dan Duff at the door of his mother’s shop. A hasty impulse prompted Lionel to question the boy of what he saw that unlucky night; or believed he saw. He crossed over; but Master Dan retreated inside the shop. Lionel followed him.
“Well, Dan! Have you overcome the fright of the cow yet?”
“’Twarn’t a cow, please, sir,” replied Dan, timidly. “’Twere a ghost.”
“Whose ghost?” returned Lionel.
Dan hesitated. He stood first on one leg then on the other.
“Please, sir, ’twarn’t Rachel’s,” said he presently.
“Whose then?” repeated Lionel.
“Please, sir, mother said I warn’t to tell you. Roy, he said, if I told it to anybody, I should be took and hunged.”
“But I say that you are to tell me,” said Lionel. And his pleasant tone, combined with the fact perhaps that he was Mr. Verner, effected more with Dan Duff than his mother’s sharp tone or Roy’s threatening one.
“Please, sir,” glancing round to make sure that his mother was not within hearing, “’twere Mr. Fred Massingbird’s. They can’t talk me out on’t, sir. I see’d the porkypine as plain as I see’d him. He were—”
Dan brought his information to a summary stand-still. Bustling down the stairs was that revered mother. She came in, curtseying fifty times to Lionel. “What could she have the honour of serving him with?” He was leaning over the counter, and she concluded he had come to patronise the shop.
Lionel laughed.
“I am a profitless customer, I believe, Mrs. Duff. I was only talking to Dan.”
Dan sidled off to the street-door. Once there, he took to his heels, out of harm’s way. Mr. Verner might get telling his mother more particulars, and it was as well to be at a safe distance.
Lionel, however, had no intention to betray trust. He stood chatting a few minutes with Mrs. Duff. He and Mrs. Duff had been great friends when he was an Eton boy: many a time had he ransacked her shop over for flies and gut and other fishing tackle, a supply of which Mrs. Duff professed to keep. She listened to him with a somewhat pre-occupied manner: in point of fact, she was debating a question with herself.
“Sir,” said she, rubbing her hands nervously one over the other, “I should like to make bold to ask a favour of you. But I don’t know how it might be took. I’m fearful it might be took as a cause of offence.”
“Not by me. What is it?”
“It’s a delicate thing, sir, to have to ask about,” resumed she. “And I shouldn’t venture, sir, to speak to you, but that I’m so put to it, and that I’ve got it in my head it’s through the fault of the servants.”
She spoke with evident reluctance. Lionel, he scarcely knew why, leaped to the conclusion that she was about to say something regarding the subject then agitating Deerham—the ghost of Frederick Massingbird. Unconsciously to him-
