“You must not go out again, sir,” he said to John Massingbird; “he may shoot you dead.”

Curious, perhaps, to say, John Massingbird had himself come to the same conclusion—­that he must not go out again.  He had very narrowly escaped meeting one who would as surely have known him, in the full moonlight, as did Robin Frost; one whom it would have been nearly as inconvenient to meet, as it was Robin.  And yet, stop in perpetual confinement by day and by night, he could not; he persisted that he should be dead—­almost better go back, unsatisfied, to Australia.

A bright idea occurred to John Massingbird.  He would personate his brother.  Frederick, so far as he knew, had neither creditors nor enemies round Deerham; and the likeness between them was so great, both in face and form, that there would be little difficulty in it.  When they were at home together, John had been the stouter of the two:  but his wanderings had fined him down, and his figure now looked exactly as Frederick’s did formerly.  He shaved off his whiskers—­Frederick had never worn any; or, for the matter of that, had had any to wear—­and painted an imitation star on his cheek with Indian-ink.  His hair, too, had grown long on the voyage, and had not yet been cut; just as Frederick used to wear his.  John had favoured a short crop of hair; Frederick a long one.

These little toilette mysteries accomplished, so exactly did he look like his brother Frederick, that Roy started when he saw him; and Mrs. Roy went into a prolonged scream that might have been heard at the brick-fields.  John attired himself in a long, loose dark coat which had seen service at the diggings, and sallied out; the coat which had been mistaken for a riding habit.

He enjoyed himself to his heart’s content, receiving more fun than he had bargained for.  It had not occurred to him to personate Frederick’s ghost; he had only thought of personating Frederick himself; but to his unbounded satisfaction, he found the former climax arrived at.  He met old Matthew Frost; he frightened Dan Duff into fits; he frightened Master Cheese; he startled the parson; he solaced himself by taking up his station under the yew-tree on the lawn at Verner’s Pride, to contemplate that desirable structure, which perhaps was his, and the gaiety going on in it.  He had distinctly seen Lionel Verner leave the lighted rooms and approach him; upon which he retreated.  Afterwards, it was rather a favourite night-pastime of his, the standing under the yew-tree at Verner’s Pride.  He was there again the night of the storm.

All this, the terrifying people into the belief that he was Frederick’s veritable ghost, had been the choicest sport to John Massingbird.  The trick might not have availed with Robin Frost, but they had found a different method of silencing him.  Of an easy, good-tempered nature, the thought of any real damage from consequences had been completely passed over by John.  If Dan Duff did go into fits, he’d