“Was it a man’s or a woman’s ghost?” asked Mr. Bitterworth, a broad smile upon his face.

“Couldn’t have been a woman’s, sir; ’twas too tall,” was the sobbing answer.  “A great tall thing it looked, like a white shadder.  I wonder I be alive!”

“So do I,” irascibly cried Mr. Verner.  “Which way was it going?  Towards the village, or in this direction?”

“Not in either of ’em, sir.  It glided right off at a angle amid the trees.”

“And it was that—­that folly, that put you into the state of tremor in which Broom found you?” said Mr. Verner.  “It was nothing else?”

“I declare, before Heaven, that it was what I saw as put me into the fright young Broom found me in,” she repeated earnestly.

“But if you were so silly as to be alarmed for the moment, why do you continue to show alarm still?”

“Because my husband says he’ll shake me,” she whimpered, after a long pause.  “He never has no patience with ghosts.”

“Serve you right,” was the half-audible comment of Mr. Verner.  “Is this all you know of the affair?” he continued, after a pause.

“It’s all, sir,” she sobbed.  “And enough too.  There’s only one thing as I shall be for ever thankful for.”

“What’s that?” asked Mr. Verner.

“That my poor Luke was away afore this happened.  He was fond of hankering after Rachel, and folks might have been for laying it on his shoulders; though, goodness knows, he’d not have hurt a hair of her head.”

“At any rate, he is out of it,” observed John Massingbird.

“Ay,” she replied, in a sort of self-soliloquy, as she turned to leave the room, for Mr. Verner told her she was dismissed, “it’ll be a corn o’ comfort amid my peck o’ troubles.  I have fretted myself incessant since Luke left, a-thinking as I could never know comfort again; but perhaps it’s all for the best now, as he should ha’ went.”

She curtsied, and the door was closed upon her.  Her evidence left an unsatisfactory feeling behind it.

An impression had gone forth that Mrs. Roy could throw some light upon the obscurity; and, as it turned out, she had thrown none.  The greater part of those present gave credence to what she said.  All believed the “ghost” to have been pure imagination; knowing the woman’s proneness to the marvellous, and her timid temperament.  But, upon one or two there remained a strong conviction that Mrs. Roy had not told the whole truth; that she could have said a great deal more about the night’s work, had she chosen to do so.

No other testimony was forthcoming.  The cries and shouts of young Broom, when he saw the body in the water, had succeeded in arousing some men who slept at the distant brick-kilns; and the tidings soon spread, and crowds flocked up.  These people were eager to pour into Mr. Verner’s room now, and state all they knew, which was precisely the evidence not required; but of further testimony to the facts there was none.