“That’s the point that I stuck at,” was Roy’s answer.  “When my wife came home with the tales, day after day, that Fred Massingbird’s spirit was walking—­that this person had seen it, and that person had seen it—­’Yah!  Rubbish!’ I says to her.  ’If his ghost had been a-coming, it ‘ud have come afore now.’  And so it would.”

“Of course,” answered Tynn. “If it had been coming.  But I have not lived to these years to believe in ghosts at last.”

“Then, what do you think of the parson, Mr. Tynn?” continued Roy, in a strangely significant tone.  “And Broom—­he have got his senses about him?  How d’ye account for their believing it?”

“I have not heard them say that they do believe it,” responded Tynn, with a knowing nod.  “Folks may go about and say that I believe it, perhaps; but that wouldn’t make it any nearer the fact.  And what has all this to do with Mr. Verner?”

“I am coming to it,” said Roy.  He took a step backward, looked carefully up and down the road, lest listeners might be in ambush; stretched his neck forward, and in like manner surveyed the field On either side the hedge.  Apparently it satisfied him, and he resumed his close proximity to Tynn and his meaning whisper.  “Can’t you guess the riddle, Mr. Tynn?”

“I can’t in the least guess what you mean, or what you are driving at,” was Tynn’s response.  “I think you must have been having a drop of drink, Roy.  I ask what this is to my master, Mr. Verner?”

“Drink be bothered!  I’ve not had a sup inside my mouth since midday,” was Roy’s retort.  “This secret has been enough drink for me, and meat, too.  You’ll keep counsel, if I tell it you, Mr. Tynn?  Not but what it must soon come out.”

“Well?” returned Tynn, in some surprise.

“It’s Fred Massingbird fast enough.  But it’s not his ghost.”

“What on earth do you mean?” asked Tynn, never for a moment glancing at the fact of what Roy tried to imply.

“He is come back:  Frederick Massingbird.  He didn’t die, over there.”

A pause, devoted by Tynn to staring and thinking.  When the full sense of the words broke upon him, he staggered a step or two away from the ex-bailiff.

“Heaven help us, if it’s true!” he uttered.  “Roy! it can’t be!”

“It is,” said Roy.

They stood looking at each other by starlight.  Tynn’s face had grown hot and wet, and he wiped it.  “It can’t be,” he mechanically repeated.

“I tell you it is, Mr. Tynn.  Now never you mind asking me how I came to the bottom of it,” went on Roy in a sort of defiant tone.  “I did come to the bottom of it, and I do know it; and Mr. Fred, he knows that I know it.  It’s as sure that he is back, and in the neighbourhood, as that you and me is here at this gate.  He is alive and he is among us—­as certain as that you are Mr. Tynn, and I be Giles Roy.”